


Déjà Vu

by interlude



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Portal Incident (Gravity Falls), Rated for violence language and sensitive themes, Stan and Ford are going to repeat things until they get it right, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:40:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 53,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27586903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/interlude/pseuds/interlude
Summary: When Ford gets sucked into the portal, Stan gets pulled in too. Afterwards he wakes up in the backseat of his car on the morning of the day he went to see Ford. Then he wakes up again.And again.--Stan and Ford get stuck in a time loop on the day of the portal incident and are forced to work through some things.
Relationships: Bill Cipher & Ford Pines, Ford Pines & Stan Pines
Comments: 664
Kudos: 364





	1. Dreams and Premonitions

**Author's Note:**

> Aaaaayyyyyy I'm a serial wip-abandoner who's awful at starting fics and then fizzling out and never finishing them. I hope to finish this one, but we'll see. 
> 
> Either way I liked the idea too much to let it stay in my brain.

There are a lot of things Stanley Pines doesn’t understand.

He’s never had a great grasp on science, and trying to get through geometry in school had felt like chipping away at an endless stone wall with nothing but his bare hands. The things that had come so easily to Ford had always felt like putty in his brain, but no matter how much he twisted and tugged at them, they never resolved themselves into any comprehensible shape.

He doesn’t understand why nothing had ever been good enough for his father despite how hard he'd tried to please him. He doesn’t understand how Ford could despise him enough to drag him all the way out to his cabin in the middle of nowhere just to tell him to fuck off and never come back.

He doesn’t understand how making one stupid teenage mistake could cost him a home, a family, and a best friend all at once.

But right now, he mostly doesn’t understand the transdimensional whats-it looming ominously in Ford’s secret basement, or why gravity has decided to take the day off, or what the hell is going to happen if Ford makes it all the way to that gleaming, terrifying circle of white.

“Stanley,” Ford yells, and unfortunately Stan understands the terror in his voice all too well, even as he wishes he didn’t. “Stanley, do something!”

Suddenly, the vast amount of things that Stan doesn’t understand hardly matter; he’s always been more of a do-er than a thinker, anyways.

He’s moving before he realizes it, rushing towards the bright yellow caution line on the ground without thinking twice, and then his feet are pushing off the ground and he isn’t coming back down, but rising, impossibly, towards Ford. His stomach drops, the same unmoored nausea he’d felt that one time he and Ford had managed to scrape up enough change to go to Coney Island and he’d been at the top of a coaster’s terrifying drop facing the intimate knowledge of his own mortality and fear.

He hasn’t been too good with heights since, and he tries not to look down and see how far he’s drifting from the floor, looks instead at how far he still is from Ford, how impossible a distance there is between him and his brother’s reaching fingers. Stan kicks his legs and paddles uselessly in empty air as if he can manage to swim without anything to push against, but it’s pointless. He’s drifting at a set pace, and Ford’s ahead, nearly to the light now, his eyes almost obscured by the reflection on his glasses.

“Ford!” Stan yells, kicking for all he’s worth. “Ford, grab my hand!”

Ford’s hand twitches but doesn’t reach, struck motionless with indecision, and for a brief moment, he tilts his head enough for the reflection on his glasses to fade, and Stan sees his eyes, wide and white, filled with a new kind of terror as he watches Stan. His mouth opens and closes, flutters with a gasp or a wordless prayer or a plea, Stan doesn’t know.

And then Ford is at the light and it’s devouring him, bones and all, in one single gulp, and the pain of his brother telling him to go is nothing compared to this complete ravaging of his insides, this feeling of something he’d thought was already in shambles tearing further. He stretches his arm as far as he can, urging his body to suddenly grow a few feet, a few inches, a millimeter if that would help, reaching his hand out until he can grab at the light, trying to find something to hold onto, an arm or a hand or a coat.

The light swallows his brother’s name as it tears from his mouth.

And then it swallows Stan too.

* * *

His body is a mess of pins and needles when he wakes, and he wonders if he’s still trapped within the portal—if this, this messy, indefinite existence, is what lies inside it. He feels for a moment completely adrift, like a ship left untethered and carried inevitably out to sea, unsure where he ends and the portal begins, before his hand flexes and the tingling fades enough for him to feel worn, fraying fabric beneath his fingertips.

Stanley Pines sits up in the backseat of his car.

It looks like any of the other many days he has woken up in the same situation, stretched out across the backseat with a thin, fraying blanket that’s seen better days draped across what little of him it covers. Outside his windows he sees snow and pine trees and a perfectly normal looking sky painted pink by sunrise. There is no sign of Ford’s odd cabin, or his terrifying basement, or the monstrosity he remembers swallowing both of them whole.

There’s no sign of anything odd at all. The outside world is exactly as it’d been when he’d decided to park alongside the road and grab a couple hours of sleep on his way to Ford’s before exhaustion ran him off the road and into a snowbank.

Stan rubs at the seat beneath him. It feels real enough under his fingers, and the cold drifting into the car from the outside world feels even more real, but the vision of the portal is hard to shake.

Could it really have been just a dream?

HIs position in the car certainly seems to say yes, but the terror he’d felt still sits heavy and real on his chest.

And what a dream. It was one thing to imagine Ford’s hatred and immediate rejection; Stan’s certainly been imaging various scenarios involving both the entire drive here—and perhaps even for years now. But could he really have dreamed up something as alien and odd as the portal?

Stan scrubs his hand across his face, pulling at the skin as if he can wipe the memory of the dream off with the movement. “You’re losing it, Pines,” he whispers, voice hoarse with sleep.

It’s almost funny, he decides—if he can shake off the horror he’d felt. Mad scientist was, in many ways, a role his brother was born to play. He’d already had the fascination with the odd and monstrous; adding a portal to worlds unknown just completed the image.

Stan unfolds himself from the car and takes a moment to stretch out his aching limbs in the cold Oregon air. No matter how many times he’s done it, his body never quite adjusts to sleeping in his car, and his body is always quick to make its displeasure with the arrangement known.

“You and me both, buddy,” Stan mutters, shaking out his shoulders as best he can. The ends of his fingers are numb with cold, his jacket and ratty blanket ill-equipped to deal with northern temperatures. There’s a reason he tends to stick to warmer climates, and it isn’t just for the kinds of jobs he manages to pick up near the Mexican border.

Why the hell is Ford living all the way out here, anyways? In a cabin in the middle of the woods, as far from civilization while still technically within town limits as he could manage.

Stan shakes his head to clear it. No, the cabin in the woods had been his imagination. Who knows where 618 Gopher Road really is. For all he knows, Ford lives in the middle of a bustling city or in a picture-perfect cul-de-sac. Of course, neither truly sound like his brother. If anything, the cabin in the middle of the woods sounded exactly like something Ford would do, and maybe Stan still knows him well enough to dream up something close to accurate.

The good news, Stan supposes, is that his brain has already conjured the worst possible scenario. HIs real meeting with Ford is bound to go better than he'd dreamed.

* * *

In the dream that still feels nothing like a dream, Stan had gotten horribly lost trying to find Gravity Falls, as the town seemed impossible to find on any maps. He’d finally stopped at a gas station and asked the woman working the cash register for directions. He’d flirted a bit, too, not only because he seemed incapable of doing so in general, but because despite being a couple years older and having terrible taste in oversized, tacky jewelry, she’d been pretty cute, and he was a sucker for brunettes.

In the dream, her earrings were big, plastic hoops, bright green and eye-catching.

Stan can’t stop staring. He knows he looks ridiculous, if not downright creepy, and the woman at the cash register in front of him isn’t being charmed by a flirtatious stranger but made uncomfortable by how intensely he’s staring at her. He should make himself say something—a joke, a pick-up line, something to break the tension. He can’t.

She’s wearing big, plastic hoops, bright green and eye-catching, and the feeling of déjà vu is so strong it nearly knocks him over.

“You need something?” the woman asks, voice tight with irritation.

Stan shakes himself. “I, uh, yeah, I, uh.” He can’t stop his eyes from flickering back to those earrings. It’s not too impossible that he could have dreamed up a brunette gas station attendant; he’d met probably hundreds over the years, after all. But what were the chances of getting that detail right?

The woman’s lips purse.

“I’m trying to find Gravity Falls,” he manages, pulling out his map so he can focus on that instead. “Can’t seem to find it on the map.”

“Oh. It’s pretty small. You usually can’t find it on most maps.”

And then she grabs a bright, red market and makes a mark on the map exactly where she had in his dream.

* * *

“It’s just a coincidence,” Stan tells himself stubbornly in the silence of his car. “That déjà vu stuff.” Sometimes things just feel familiar; it doesn’t mean that anything truly weird was happening.

It wasn’t like Stan could really predict the future, after all. Fortune tellers were just liars who knew how to sell it. He knew that from experience, days and nights spent curled up to his mother’s side listening to her string a gullible customer along, keeping them on the line for just one more minute to hear of this son’s upcoming promotion or this daughter’s upcoming suitor.

“She’d get a kick out of this, though,” he says, and the thought brings a smile to his face. He can almost feel her hands holding his cheeks, smell her heavy perfume, hear her voice saying, “Oh, my free little spirit Stanley can see the future. Isn’t he so _gifted_?”

She’d been the only one who’d ever said so, even if there wasn’t really anything gifted about him.

Ford would have gotten a kick out of it, too, back in the day. Though for him it would be a mystery to solve.

The thought of Ford makes his stomach twist, and he can’t help but think of just how bad it had gone down in his dream. If he got the earrings right, how much more could he have predicted? The anger seems a good bet. The holier-than-thou, arrogant attitude, too. Maybe he’d end up getting everything right but the portal.

Stan’s hands clench tighter on the wheel. They’re still nearly numb; it’s still much too cold in the car, even with the engine running and the heat cranked up as high as the poor girl can manage.

What if the real Ford parrots back every nasty thing the Ford of his dreams said? What if he really is calling him out here just to run an errand before he asks him to leave him alone forever—go to the very opposite ends of the Earth, even. Is it really worth driving all the way there just to be disappointed? Again?

“It was a dream, you idiot,” Stan hisses. “You’re not a damn fortune teller.”

So he’d gotten the earrings right, so what. Lots of ladies had big, tacky earrings like that. And so what if the road he’s driving down looks awfully familiar and he swears he’s driven down it before. A coincidence, that’s all it was.

His own fears about seeing Ford again spun a ridiculous story, but his brother had been the one to ask him to come. His brother needed him, wanted him maybe, and he wasn’t going to let a stupid dream chase him off.

* * *

Ford does in fact live in a cabin in the middle of the woods far removed from civilization. There actually are Keep Out signs posted out front and barbed wire guarding the entrance. Stan pushes down the uneasiness and tries to take comfort in the idea that he still knows his brother well enough after ten years apart to predict things about him. HIs stomach still churns with fear and uncertainty regardless.

It was a dream, he reminds himself. Ford isn’t really going to greet him with a crossbow to the face.

“It’s going to be okay,” he whispers as he makes his way to the door. “You already dreamed up the worst possible meeting. The real thing is bound to go better.” He forces a laugh. It doesn’t sound genuine.

In all the life-threatening, dangerous situations in Stan’s life, he’s never been more scared than he is just then, staring down his brother’s door.

He knocks anyway.

The door bursts open, and the first thing that Stan sees clearly is the crossbow he thought he’d dreamed up waving in his face. He nearly trips off the porch in his haste to get away from it; even that is eerily familiar.

“What kind of trick is this?!” his brother screams, and he’s just as sickly and unhinged as Stan had dreamed, his hair a greasy mess of wayward curls, his eyes bloodshot and lined with thick, dark bags. His skin is pale and in desperate need of sun. His shirt is lopsided, as if Ford lined the buttons up incorrectly and hadn’t noticed. The stench of body odor and week-old sweat wafts off him.

But worst of all is the look in his eyes. Stan’s brother has always had an awful temper, and Stan has found himself on the other side of it more than once, but never until this moment has Stan ever associated that temper with violence.

Ford looks like he could kill him.

Ford kind of looks like he _wants_ to kill him.

Stan throws his hands up in surrender. “Ford,” he gasps, pleading. “It’s me. It’s Stanley.”

This is so much worse than the dream.

“Don’t play games with me!” Ford screams, his voice bursting out of his small, withered frame with all the force of a freight train. “How dare you come here looking like that, you foul, miserable _demon_!”

Ford doesn’t even need to pull the trigger. The words hit with the same force as the bolt. He’s heard his brother angry with him. He’s never heard him so utterly filled with hate. It’s all his worst fears from the last ten years brought to life, and Stan can’t deny it any longer. His brother really, truly _hates_ him.

“Ford,” he gasps, because he can’t manage anything more. He doesn’t even know what he wants to say, whether he wants to argue that his brother is the one who called him here, that Stan spent the last money he had on enough gas to get here and doesn’t that get him any kind of thanks?

Mostly he just wants to beg _please, please don’t hate me. I can’t stand you hating me_.

“Don’t you dare,” Ford growls, more animal than man. He’s shaking, Stan realizes. It was hard to tell at first because he’s holding the crossbow straight. It hasn’t wavered from Stan since he stepped outside. “You think this trick will work on me?”

“It’s—it’s not a trick! Ford!” Stan wants to be angry. Being angry is so much better than being hurt, but the only thing he can feel at all is fear. He’s never been scared of his brother, and it’s an awful new feeling.

“Get out! Leave me be!” Ford yells, and Stan has one brief moment to scramble for something to say, something that can deactivate the live wire of a brother standing before him, before there’s a click, a high-pitched whistle, and a sudden, sharp weight tears at his throat.

It’s agony.

It’s greater than any pain he’s felt before, and Stanley Pines is no stranger to pain.

His brain isn’t working; he can’t make sense of what happened, just knows that he’s on fire, his _throat_ is on fire, and he can’t breathe no matter how much he gasps for air. He raises a shaking hand to his throat, feels the shape of something foreign, something that shouldn’t be there, and pulls it back to see it wet with blood.

He looks forward, searching for where his brother was just a moment ago, and sees instead the sky, cloudy and overcast, and realizes that he’s on his back in the snow, even though he can’t even feel the cold, isn’t registering it. When did he fall down? Where is Ford? What hit him?

Did Ford _shoot_ him?

He tries to say his brother’s name, doesn’t know if it’s a plea or an accusation, but his mouth is filled with blood and he coughs instead, choking.

He’s never been in so much pain before. Not even when Rico had—not even when—

It was _Ford_.

His body is in too much shock to cry, but he wants to. All these years he’s been running from one possible death after another, wondering what awful thing was going to finally do him in, which lawless scumbag, and it was his brother all along. His brother who’d called for him. His brother he’d dropped everything and wasted every last penny to get to.

How could he? How _could_ he? His world boils down to a single question repeating on a loop, a record player stuck on a scratch. How could he, how could he, how could he. Hadn’t Stan paid enough for his failures? Hadn’t Ford ever loved him a little?

“Stanley!”

He hears his name, and something in his brain clicks into place, and he realizes he’s been hearing it for a while. Just his name, shouted over and over again in desperation, the only sound louder than his sputtering, gasping breaths.

Ford’s face swims into view, and if Stan had thought he’d looked bad before, it was nothing compared to now, because Ford looks like he’s watching the world come to an end just feet in front him. He looks wrecked, pale and bloodshot and wild and horrified, and it makes no sense, Stan thinks, because Ford had done this. He had no right to look horrified at the consequences, not when he’d thrown Stan to the curb for his own mistake and abandoned him for an entire decade of his life. Not now, when he’s the reason Stan is sputtering and dying and gasping into the bitter cold Oregon air.

The pain in his throat spikes. Someone is pressing at the wound—maybe Ford, maybe someone new, Stan doesn’t know. He’s losing track of where he is.

“Stanley! No, no, no, no, please, _no!_ ”

He thinks Ford is crying. How weird. Ford never cries. 

“I’m so sorry. Lee _,_ I’m so sorry.”

It’s hard to make out what Ford’s saying anymore. Stan stops trying to focus, lets his brain just drift off into the snow like it wants to, and then he isn’t aware of anything at all.

* * *

Stanley Pines sits up in the backseat of his car.


	2. Try, Try Again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone for your wonderful comments!! They were lovely, and I was very touched to read them! I'm so happy everyone liked the first chapter, and I hope this one doesn't disappoint.
> 
> One important note:
> 
> I wanted to work Stan and Ford's Jewish culture and upbringing more into the story, because I think it plays a big part in shaping who they both are. Unfortunately, I'm not Jewish and while I've tried to do research on phrases/words/details I can include, it's very possible I'm getting things wrong. I'll be making an effort to include more Yiddish into Stan's POV and the dialogue and will add definitions in the ending notes after each chapter. 
> 
> If any of my readers are Jewish and notice I'm writing any details or using any words incorrectly, please let me know! Also if you think there's something that Stan and Ford would absolutely do/not do, please let me know!

Stan scrambles out of the backseat and to the ground outside in an uncoordinated tangle of limbs, then promptly loses everything still in his stomach to the dirty snow below him. It isn’t much, more bile than real food, and it stings his throat coming up.

His throat.

Fuck.

He lifts a shaky, cautious hand, half-afraid to actually make contact on the off chance there really _is_ a crossbow bolt sticking through the skin. But of course there isn’t; he wouldn’t be breathing right now if there was. And he is, in heaves and gasps, choking on spit and what he refuses to accept is the beginning of a breakdown, but he’s breathing, nonetheless. 

There’s no sign of injury at all. At least nothing current, though the tips of his fingers catch slightly on the mostly faded result of a bar brawl gone wrong from years ago.

It was a dream.

The fucking weirdest dream he’s ever had, but what else could it be? His subconscious is terrified to see Ford again and unsure of the outcome, so it’s gone ahead and created two: one where his brother’s a full blown mad scientist and another where he hates Stan to the point of fratricide.

Great, Stan thinks. Even his own brain is out to get him now.

He kneels for a long time on the side of the road, until the snow has fully soaked through his jeans and numbed his knees and his brain stops spinning in circles. It’s silly to be so out of sorts over this. Stan’s no stranger to nightmares; he’s dreamed his own death countless nights before, in a million different ways to a million different hands. 

It’s just never felt quite so real. 

Even now in the morning light, he can recall just how much it _hurt_. Pain has never quite stuck with him this well after waking.

It comes to his awareness slowly just how cold he is. His knees are blocks of ice. His fingers are practically frozen solid. His face stings. Stan brings a shaky hand up to knead at his brow and lets out a shaky breath. It escapes as a cloud of white fog into the frigid morning air. Shaking off the last stubbornly clingy bits of memory as best he can, Stan stands, ignoring the ache in his back and his knees and just about every part of him. For once it’s almost welcome. It’s a sign that he’s still alive.

Collapsing into the front seat of his car, Stan tries to take stock of what he knows for sure.

His brother lives at 618 Gopher Road in Gravity Falls, Oregon. Whether or not that address really is a creepy-looking cabin out in hotseplots has yet to be determined. 

Ford asked him to come. To _please_ come, and Stan was trying not to be too foolishly optimistic, because that had never ended well for him before, but his eyes had traced that word choice nearly a hundred times over since he’d first received the postcard.

Everything else—the portal, the journal, Ford telling him to fuck off, and, well, the other thing he’s trying very hard not to think about anymore - was just his own imagination.

So why is it so damn hard to shake off?

* * *

Stan still stops for directions, but he avoids the first gas station he passes. It’s eerily familiar—but in the way all gas stations everywhere are eerily familiar, every one looking like you might have been there before, he assures himself. It’s not because he’s afraid to step inside and see a cute brunette attendant with gaudy hoop earrings. 

The next gas station down the way is just as similar looking, but pulling up to it doesn’t send that déjà vu crawling all over his skin like angry ants. He doesn’t flirt with the attendant at this one, but only because he looks like the sort of guy who would punch Stan if he tried.

The whole experience is just familiar enough to be comfortable, and just as new to be reassuring, and when the attendant marks a spot on the map that Stan swears he’s seen marked two times already, it’s easy to brush it off as simple coincidence.

Still, he eyes his surroundings more carefully as he drives. Did he pass that shack in his dream? Or does it just look like a million other shacks he’s driven by in his lifetime? Stan’s spent a third of his life crisscrossing the roads of the United States; Oregon’s new to him, but the things you see driving down highways and roads never really changes that much. Of course Oregon is dotted with crumbling shacks and rundown gas stations and all manor of places and intersections he swears he’s seen before. Everywhere is.

That’s why it feels familiar. It has to be.

* * *

Something inside him grabs his heart tight and squeezes when he pulls up to 618 Gopher Road to find a familiar looking cabin in the middle of the woods; for a moment, it takes everything in Stan to just keep himself breathing. His hands are white-knuckled on the wheel as he pulls the car into the front yard, and he’s not sure whether the sudden chill he feels is the Diablo’s struggling heater finally giving out or fear.

It is, quite literally, the house of his nightmares.

“It’s nothing,” Stan says, but even his own voice sounds weak and the silence that answers him sounds unconvinced. He can’t seem to pull his eyes away from the snow in front of his brother’s front door. It looks like it hasn’t been touched since it fell, a perfect, unblemished covering of white, but Stan can remember lying there. He can remember gasping and writhing and _dying_ there. 

Something is crushing his lungs. Something has its heavy claws around him. He can’t breathe; he’s gasping but there’s no air in the car, and he’s trapped and suffocating, and he throws a hand to his throat but there’s no bolt to pull out. It’s untouched, unblemished, like the snow, but that doesn’t make sense because he _knows_ he fell there. He could feel the cold, hard ground beneath him. He could feel the pain, so much closer than a dream, and he had looked up to see his brother’s face—

His brother—

Please come, Ford had said. _Please_ come.

Stan swallows his fear for his brother’s sake, shoves it down deep inside of him, brushes away the tears collecting at his eyes, ignores the heavy weight crushing his chest like not thinking about it will make it go away, and with the mantra _a dream, a dream, just a dream_ beating fiercely in his head, he storms his way to the front door and knocks.

It doesn’t burst open like it had in his dream. It creaks open hesitantly, slowly revealing one wide, bloodshot eye, then two, then his brother’s face completely, and somehow, as bad as he’d looked in Stan’s own imagination, Ford looks even worse in reality. He looks just as exhausted and out of sorts, his hair and clothes still in disarray, his eyes sunken and face gaunt, and now there’s no crossbow blocking Stan’s view or portal to distract him, the word skeletal comes to mind. But that’s not the worst part.

All their life, Ford has been bursting with energy. Not in the same way Stan always was, overactive and spastic, knocking into things because he couldn’t quite contain himself to just his body. Instead, it was his brain that never settled, circling and circling in an endless pursuit of knowledge, of meaning, of some desire so fundamental to Ford that Stan had never fully understood. 

Stan doesn’t know how to put it into words, exactly, and he’s never been the one good with them, but Ford’s eyes have always been bright. Bright when he found a new mystery, bright when he puzzled over a new problem, bright when he learned a new fact and his tongue tripped over itself trying to repeat it to Stan. You could practically see the gears turning behind them, the sparks lighting and synapses firing.

Ford’s eyes look dull. He looks drained out and wrung dry.

He looks—but no, Stan must be reading things wrong, because Ford looks like he’s been crying.

Neither of them make the first move to speak. Stan’s brain is too busy trying not to think of his dream and cataloguing the details of his brother’s face, and Ford looks like he’s been punched in the gut, his mouth floundering silently on too many thoughts, face slack with shock.

The cold wind whistles between them. There’s a thunk behind the door, and Stan can only assume that Ford has dropped something.

“Hey,” he manages, because it seems like Ford really isn’t going to speak—and maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe it’s a relief that Ford isn’t yelling at him or launching into explanations or shoving a journal at him or waving a crossbow or any of the images that are still haunting him. Ford is just staring, wordlessly, eyes roaming his face with all the urgency of a starving dog eyeing its next meal, and Stan doesn’t know what that _means_ , but surely it's a good sign, right?

“I came,” Stan adds.

Ford crumples. Every part of him folds in on himself. He lowers his head and buries his face in his hands, and Stan can see now that he’s trembling, on the verge of hysterics or tears, and Stan doesn’t know where they stand yet, but he can’t help himself from reaching out a hand for Ford’s shoulder, desperate to drag his brother into a hug.

Ford flinches away from him. Stan’s hand hangs awkwardly in the open air between them, rejected and useless.

“Stanley,” Ford croaks. “You’re—” He swallows his words, then swallows the vulnerability completely and steels himself, straightening his back and ironing out his face. “Come in.” He turns without another word, not even watching to see if Stan will follow before he heads back into his house. 

Stan steps inside warily and closes the door. It looks how he remembers it, overflowing with a million odds and ends he can’t make sense of, papers and sparking machines and something that looks like a real dinosaur skull. The weight on his chest sinks down deeper. Stan feels like he’s on the precipice of something, inches away from a dizzying fall, like one bad move will send him tumbling over.

Ford is pacing circles, expertly avoiding the mess. His back is ramrod straight the way it is when he’s trying to pretend he’s okay, as if forcing himself to keep perfect posture will make everything else fall in line. Stan doesn’t know when he started doing that exactly—when he started puffing himself up to his full height when he’s hurt or scared instead of curling in on himself.

“I had a theory,” Ford is saying, and Stan pulls his focus away from studying the eerily familiar room to pay attention to him. It’s an odd way to start their reunion, but Ford’s never been the best with social situations, so Stan waits for him to get his thoughts out. It almost feels like he’s ten years younger, sitting on his bottom bunk and listening to Ford run through a million words just to finally get to the point he wants to make. “But I wasn’t certain until you showed up. This confirms it, although I need to do more tests to determine the exact parameters of our situation.”

Stan takes a seat on the dinosaur fossil and settles in to wait. His chest still feels like it’s caving in, stuffed too full with heavy things, and there’s an energy buzzing under his skin desperate to escape. His fingers are shaking slightly; try as he might, he can’t get them to stop. It must be the hunger; he can’t remember when he’s last eaten. 

Ford continues his pacing. “I can only assume it’s a result of going through the portal. It was designed to rip holes through dimensions, after all, and time _is_ a dimension. This is not an effect I had predicted, but I’m afraid to say there is a lot about it that I’m not as sure of as I previously thought.”

Stan freezes.

He stares at Ford.

“It will take some time to figure out how to undo this, though. I suppose we could always try going back through it, although I can’t suggest that. Who knows what another trip would do to us? It might unravel our timeline completely—or perhaps unravel us.”

Ford’s words are a high-pitched buzz. Stan can’t make sense of them. He can’t even hear them fully. His brain has stopped completely, as frozen as the world outside the cabin.

“The portal’s real?” he hears himself croak, and Ford stops, turning to him.

“Of course it’s real.”

Something desperate, something frantic, bubbles up within him. He tries to shove it down, to keep it contained and quiet, but it can’t be stopped. It bursts forth, erupting like a geyser.

Stan tumbles off the precipice.

He’s crying before he can process it, heaving and gasping, and the weight on his chest is doubling, tripling, becoming too much to manage; it’s going to squash him flat. It’s going to suffocate him. It’s going to _kill_ him, but it can’t, how could it? He’s already died.

“I—it was real,” he heaves, snot and tears choking his words. “The portal, and then I woke up—and then—” He looks up and locks eyes with Ford, and he has just enough awareness to see that his brother looks _terrified._ “You shot me.”

It comes out as a whisper at first. Then again, louder. “You _shot_ me.”

Ford flinches like he’s been hit. “Stanley, I—”

“You killed me. I—holy shit.” He can barely say it. He doesn’t want to voice it. “I _died_.”

His limbs are out of control. They won’t stop shaking. His skin is buzzing, angry and loud; it feels like he’s caught on a live wire, riding out the shockwave.

“You shot me,” he says again. He wants to say it until Ford proves him wrong, until Ford denies it. Until Ford says he couldn’t possibly, not ever.

“You don’t understand,” Ford says instead. “I didn’t know it was you!”

It feels like a slap. It feels like a tidal wave. Stan feels cold all over, frozen from the inside out.

“You didn’t—” He scoffs. Every part of him is shaking. He can’t stop it. “We have the same fucking face, Ford! What, have you not looked in a mirror in the last ten years?!”

“You don’t understand,” Ford says again, desperately, but Stan’s had enough excuses and explanations. He’s had enough of Ford acting like Stan can’t possibly understand him. He’s had enough of standing up for his brother, of dropping everything for his brother, of getting sent two words and racing halfway across the country for his brother, only to get bupkis in return.

Only to die for it.

“Fuck you,” he says. It comes out wavery and watery.

Stan can’t make it out of the house fast enough. He doesn’t want to spend another minute here in the place where his brother killed him, but his body won’t cooperate, too jittery to be coordinated, and he stumbles to the front door, then scrambles frantically with the doorknob, hands shaking too much to grab hold of it.

“Stanley,” Ford gasps out behind him, and it sounds desperate, but Stan doesn’t want to hear it. “Stanley, please, I didn’t—I didn’t _know_. You have to believe me.”

Stan gets the door open. He stumbles outside, down the porch steps, into the snow where he died, towards his car. He hears heavy footsteps behind him, Ford following him out, but he doesn’t turn.

“It’s a time loop!” Ford shouts. “We’re stuck repeating the same day. You’re still going to be stuck in it. Lee, _please_ listen to me!”

Stan gets his car door open, then whips around to look at Ford. He hadn’t bothered to put on shoes when he followed Stan out, and the show is soaking into his socks. He’s shivering, clutching the ends of his trench coat around him. Even now, Stan can’t help the desire to gently lead him inside, get him a blanket and something warm, and he _hates_ himself for it. 

“Then I’ll figure it out myself!” he shouts. “Like I always do!”

Ford says nothing in reply. He stays quiet while Stan gets in his car and pulls quickly out of the yard, tires screeching on the snow. He stays quiet while the car reverses and pulls away. When Stan glances up at his rearview mirror, Ford is still standing there with no shoes, shivering with cold, staring at the car as it gets further and further away, looking smaller than Stan’s ever seen him.

He slams the pedal down, peeling around the winding corners and sudden turns faster than he should, but desperate to get away to somewhere safer, somewhere where he can breathe clearer, somewhere where he won’t have to see or think of his brother ever again. There’s tears streaming down his face, and he feels like a fool for crying. He can practically hear his father insulting him, telling him that real men don’t cry and have fits like children, but his body refuses to listen to him, keeps crying and shuddering and shaking, and he keeps gasping and sobbing and struggling to breathe.

He raises a hand to scrub at the tears on his face, but more keep coming. 

He wants to scream. He wants to curse his brother. He wants to go back in time and burn the postcard when it arrives.

Something moves behind the trees. Something big. Stan whips his head to look at it and doesn’t realize he’s whipping the wheel with the movement until the car turns sharply; the tires hit a patch of ice, and the car goes flying, spinning out of control like his body, and the forest rises up to meet him, and everything goes black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aren't panic attacks fun? :/
> 
> Yiddish:
> 
> Hotseplots - middle of nowhere  
> Bubkis - nothing


	3. Round and Round

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again to everyone who commented on the last chapter! I love seeing everyone's reactions. :)

The first thing Stan does upon waking up in the backseat of his car again is step outside into the snow and hurl every curse and insult he can think of into the open air so loudly that a couple of birds startle and fly away. His anger burns close and hot, and it feels good to say the words aloud, to scream yemakh-shmoy at the memory of his brother’s face with so much force he practically spits on the syllables. 

When he gets through Yiddish and the small bit of Hebrew he can remember from his bubbe, he moves on to Spanish, dragging up every awful name he picked up from his time in Columbia. By the time he’s run out of words to say, his throat is scratched raw from screaming, and his anger has cooled down, no longer a raging inferno but a frigid piece of ice buried deep in the core of him, and while it’s no smaller than before, it’s at least possible to think beyond it.

He sinks back into his car and buries his head in his hands. A time loop, Ford said, and while Stan doesn’t quite understand what that means or how that’s possible, the name is descriptive enough. So it’s a cycle—the same day over and over again. Until what? They die? Only that doesn’t make sense, because Stan’s pretty sure he’s done that twice now, although he’s trying very hard not to linger on that.

So what, for eternity? This same day over and over again, unending?

With a groan, Stan falls back against the backseat. He can’t stand the thought of this going on forever; it’s only been three days so far, if he hasn't lost count, and he’s already exhausted.

There has to be a way to break it. So death might not be it, but that doesn’t mean something else isn’t the answer. Suddenly determined, Stan sits back up. Ford might be the scientist of the family, but Stan knows how to screw around until you figure something out.

His first thought is to get as far from the portal as possible. If it really was the cause of this mess, then maybe the solution is as simple as heading in the exact opposite direction, putting as much space between him and his brother’s crazy house, and his brother, as possible. 

Stan aims South and just keeps driving. The radio catches on different stations as he goes, filling the car with a medley of Rock n’ Roll, Jazz, and Southern Gospel. He turns the volume up loud enough to drown out his thoughts, but they still manage to slip through in the staticky cracks between stations. 

He sees his brother’s face a lot—the horrified panic as Stan lay dying, the frantic attempt at control and reason the following day, the image of him standing in his socks in the show as Stan drove farther and farther away, and he realizes, with a pit forming in his stomach, that he can’t truly figure out what any of them mean. Fear? Pity? Guilt? Somehow Ford has become unreadable to him, a cipher Stan doesn’t have the key for. 

When they were younger, Stan and Ford invented their own language.

It was rudimentary at best, but it’d given them a way to talk to each other in secret around bullies, around mean-spirited classmates—even around their father. They’d never kept a written dictionary; they hadn’t needed it. Being able to understand each other was a fundamental part of both of them, something so ingrained in the very skin of them that Stan had always taken it for granted. 

He hadn’t realized how much he clung to the knowledge that there was someone out there who would always see to the core of him and interpret it perfectly until it was gone, shattered with the simple closing of two curtains. 

He thinks he would have traded all the treasure in the world to hold onto that silly made-up language. 

But they’d lost it somewhere along the way. Ford had stopped speaking it, and then he’d stopped understanding Stan—one after the other just like that. He started getting angry at things Stan said, giving him the cold shoulder for days while Stan wracked his brain for what he could have possibly said wrong. He stopped running to tell him new facts or share his thoughts and discoveries with him, keeping them contained to his mind and his journals instead, brushing Stan off by telling him he wouldn't understand and somehow missing the wince every time. 

At some point, Ford stopped understanding why Stan wanted to spend all his free time on the Stan o’ War, why fixing up an old boat everyone said would never be sea-worthy made Stan feel _important_ , like maybe he could do something worthwhile with his life after all. Ford stopped understanding that the Stan o’ War was a refuge away from disinterested teachers ready to write Stan off or his father’s constant cold disappointment or the looming knowledge that he was destined for nothing and nowhere, that Stanley Pines wasn’t smart, wasn’t talented, wasn’t important, and was going to fade out of existence when he finally kicked it as nothing special.

But that maybe, just maybe, if he could fix up an old broken thing and make it work, if he could take it and his brother who thought he mattered and sail off to adventure and treasure and other worlds he could prove them all wrong. Because if the Stan o’ War could sail without sinking, maybe Stanley Pines could too.

And Ford hadn’t understood. Had _stopped_ understanding. Because to Ford the Stan o’ War was a childish hobby that became a distraction from how big and impressive and brightly he was going to shine, and if Stan wanted to work on it then he should just go do it himself because Ford had projects, Ford had research, Ford had a million more important things to do instead, things that were going to take the world by storm, things that didn’t need Stan and would never need Stan because Stan just wasn’t smart enough to contribute to his brother’s destiny. 

At some point, Ford had grown tired of the Stan o’ War, and maybe he had grown tired of Stan too.

Stan blinks abruptly. It must be the sun, beaming directly in his eyes. He rummages around with one hand for a pair of battered sunglasses that have seen better days and puts them on. It’s been a long time since he’s thought of that made-up language. Long enough that he can’t remember any of the words now. 

He wishes he could.

* * *

He makes it all the way to Reno before he has to use the last few dollars in his pocket to fill his gas tank. His stomach rumbles angrily as he walks past isles full of potato chips, beef jerky, and chocolate bars to reach the counter, but he’s gotten good at ignoring it over the years. 

Stan doesn’t really have a destination in mind, but he likes the idea of getting through Nevada. The thought of having an entire state in between him and Ford is comforting, and the warmer temperatures of the Southern states are calling his name. So he keeps driving, fiddling with the radio and chasing stations as he goes, desperate to cover the thoughts and fears and anger that wants so fiercely to claw itself to the forefront of his mind.

He keeps a steady eye on his watch. The hour hand creeps past nine at night, then ten, then eleven, and then finally midnight. Nothing changes. Stan’s still at the wheel, headed southbound on the highway towards Arizona. Relief bubbles up in his chest, then bursts out as laughter, slightly off key, slightly hysterical. Is that really it? All it took was crossing state lines? He didn’t need Ford to figure this out after all. He just needed to get away from Ford. 

_Hah_. 

Maybe the universe is trying to tell him something, and it only took dying twice to finally learn the lesson. The relief curdles like milk at the thought. The laughter turns bitter. 

“He deserves it,” Stan tells the empty seat beside him, but the words feel like lies in his mouth, and he hates the fact that he still can’t make himself hate Ford, that something deep within him rebels at the very idea.

He wants to hate him. He’s wanted to hate him for ten years. Hating him would be easier than missing him.

Stan turns the music up louder and focuses on trying to hum along to the unfamiliar song.

Eventually, his gas starts running low again. About the same time, his eyes start drooping and his yawns get harder to fight off. He hasn’t made it to Arizona yet, but his watch tells him he’s well into the early morning hours of November 6th, and he feels safe enough to pull onto the side of the road and roll into the backseat. It’s warm enough that he doesn’t feel like he’s going to freeze to death in the middle of the night; he can actually still feel all ten fingers and toes.

Stan falls asleep, ready to leave November 5th behind.

* * *

When he wakes up in the backseat, Stan doesn’t think much of it, until the cold creeps in and he finds himself shivering. His stomach sinks like a rock. For a moment, he stubbornly refuses to open his eyes and face the inevitable; he even tries rolling over and burying his face in the smoke-soaked fabric of the seat to block out the sun, hoping he can fall back asleep and wake back up in Nevada.

It’s no use. 

Stan sits up and faces the sight outside his window. The snow covered pine trees of Oregon greet him.

He heaves a tired sigh. “Shit.”

* * *

Maybe, Stan considers, pacing a line through the snow, he just hadn’t gotten far enough away.

He stuffs a hand in his jacket pocket and pulls out the small handful of wrinkly dollar bills and change. It’s clear he’s not going to get much further by car unless he finds a way to make more cash quickly or robs a few gas stations along the way, and getting shot twice in his life is enough for him (though at least only one time will leave a scar), so he rules that option out quickly. 

But while it’s not enough for gas, it might be enough for bus fare. He shrugs. It’s worth a shot at least. 

Stan drives to the nearest Greyhound station and purchases a ticket for Dallas. 

It hurts to leave the Diablo behind. He’s fought tooth and nail to keep her with him all these years, even when selling her might have gotten him a hot meal and a motel room for a couple weeks. His car is the only real belonging he has in the world—the only thing of any real value anyways. And he’d worked hard for her, summer job after summer job because there was no way Pa was going to waste the money on a second car when the family already had one, and certainly not for _Stan_. He’d done just about anything he could that summer, hauling crates on the docks, serving ice cream, working the sandwich place next door to his father’s shop, and he had the Diablo to show for it. She’s maybe the one thing in his life he can feel truly proud of. 

He runs a hand apologetically across her hood. “I’ll be back for you, sweetheart, I swear.”

Traveling by bus is pretty nice, he finds. It’s warm, for one thing, and the other passengers keep to themselves, although one kid seems to be undergoing a crisis, crying herself into hysterics while her frantic mother tries to shush her. He’s learned to tune out worse sounds over the years though, so Stan stretches his legs out and gets comfortable, settling in to watch the trees pass by outside the window. 

It’d be nice to have a book or magazine or something to keep his mind occupied, something to distract him from replaying the meeting with Ford over and over again. He sees the portal again, looming like a hungry beast, hears his brother tell him to sail far away from him, sees the crossbow point his way and hears his brother’s enraged shouts, his insults, feels the—

Stan shifts abruptly in his seat, trying to shake the thought loose. Something in his back pocket pokes him. He reaches down and pulls it free, surprised to find the folded postcard that started it all.

Stan unfolds it. He smooths down the crease. He traces a finger over the words _please, come_. He pictures his brother writing them, hunched over at his desk, so frantic he opted for large, rigid capitals instead of his typical, dainty cursive. Stan tries to picture the monster that asked him to come just to murder him, but he can’t, can’t quite fit the cruelty on his brother’s face and make the image work.

He still remembers his brother as the timid boy too scared to fight back, who sat hunched in the corner of his bed staring at his hands sometimes for hours, trying to find the fault that everyone else saw. He sees the boy that patiently held ice against Stan’s face after he’d gotten yet another black eye, who sat on the sidelines of Stan’s boxing matches and cheered even when he’d lost, who was the first to read Lil’ Stanley and laugh enthusiastically at every page, who helped paint the words Stan o’ War onto an old wreck and told Stan they were going to sail the world together. 

Maybe it’s time for Stan to face the facts; that boy is gone.

He’d disappeared when their made-up language did.

“Asshole,” he spits at the postcard, then rips it clean in two and lets the halves flutter, abandoned, to the dirty floor.

* * *

  
  


At some point between Albuquerque and Dallas, after nearly 26 hours awake, Stan drifts off and wakes up back in the Diablo in Oregon.

Distance, clearly, isn’t the answer, and Stan is embarrassed to admit he doesn’t really have another idea. Fuck around and figure it out might be his one true skill in life, but he’s well out of his element. But there’s no chance in hell he’s going back to Ford to beg for his help, which means the only thing left to do is make the best of it.

Stan heads to Vegas.

There’s a fairly intoxicated man leaving the casino as Stan arrives, and it’s easy to ‘accidentally’ bump into him and slip his wallet out of his pocket and into his jacket. He gets a few curses thrown his way, but he walks away a richer man, and a quick examination as he enters reveals he’s got at least a couple hundred to blow on food, alcohol, and a few rounds of black jack for the night. 

The first night he loses more than he wins, but he gets to eat his fill and drink enough to forget Ford’s face, so he considers it a win. He drinks more than enough to forget the past few days, in fact, ordering drink after drink until he can hardly even read the cards in his hand and the whole room starts spinning. He must drink enough to black out, because at some point he wakes up back in the Diablo.

He drives to Vegas again, pickpockets the same drunk man by the entrance, and enters the same black jack table. As he picks up his card, it dawns on him that he remembers getting dealt this card the day before. He remembers a good number of cards the dealer played and a good number of what the people around him played too. He remembers that it was the sunburnt man with the thick mustache to his left that won the first game.

And he realizes that repeating the same day over again might be the best con in the world.

* * *

The next day, Stan goes back to Vegas and wins more money than he’s ever seen in his entire life outside of the bags of cash he’d seen running with Rico and his drug cartel. He plays nearly every game perfectly, knowing exactly who has what, who’s bluffing, what card is coming next, losing only enough to avoid suspicion. He feels unstoppable. He feels incredible. He feels slightly dizzy from the constant round of drinks he orders.

When he cashes out just a few hours before midnight, he feels like he could weep with joy.

“Oh, beautiful, beautiful money!” he crows as he grabs one of the bundles, giving it several loud, enthusiastic kisses and just barely stopping himself from rubbing it all over his face. The woman behind the counter gives him a practiced smile and politely ignores the display. Frankly, Stan doesn’t even care if she thinks he’s a crackpot. He’s _fucking rich_.

He finds the nicest hotel in Vegas and rents a room for the night. The man at the front desk eyes him like he’s something found stuck to the bottom of his shoe, but the disgust rolls right off Stan, who doubts anything in the world right now could bring him down from the high he’s on. The man changes his tune when Stan pulls out a wad of cash, and it really is amazing how the world changes for you when you have money because suddenly Stan is being called sir, being told to have a great night and to call the desk if he needs anything, and a bellhop is rushing forward to help Stan with his bags, though he’s disappointed to find Stan doesn’t have more than the thin, ratty duffle on his shoulder.

Stan feels _important_.

And when he makes it to his room and sees the massive bed covered in pillows, the mini fridge in the corner, and the pure decadence of the decor, he feels like a king.

With a delighted laugh, he falls face first into the bed and stretches out, wriggling around like he’s making a snow angel. 

“Now this is what I’m talking about,” he tells the empty room. “I could get used to this.”

He finds the room service menu and orders himself both a steak and spaghetti because he can’t choose and he doesn’t have to, along with a full bottle of wine and a slice of chocolate cake. He takes a hot shower and loses track of time standing beneath the water, scrubbing himself clean with sweet smelling soap and combing carefully through his ratty hair, and then he wraps himself in a fuzzy, white robe, and eats his cake while stretched out on his bed and half buried in pillows.

He feels comfortable for the first time in ten years.

And then he falls asleep.

* * *

It’s not as bad waking up in his car this time. He’d expected it, at least, even if he’s disappointed to find his pockets mostly empty once again and the money he’d won gone. It hurts to know that after finally finding a way to make thousands, he can’t keep it for longer than a night, but it’s not hard to go back to Vegas and repeat it all again, even down to kissing the money when it lands in his hands.

This time he orders every single thing off the menu and tries it all. He learns that he can’t stand veal but doesn’t feel bad throwing it out after just one bite. It’ll all reset tomorrow anyways.

For weeks he goes through the same cycle, trying new games and learning to predict every outcome, winning big, and falling asleep in comfort. When the games get boring, he starts making rounds through the casino, watching every single person and learning their actions well enough to predict perfectly the next day. A few times he amuses himself by telling people he’s a psychic, then laughing at their amazed faces when his predictions turn true.

He switches casinos, learning new patterns. He switches hotels, trying every new item on the menu and every single drink. He spends time in the pool. At one hotel he books a late night spa. 

For a while, it’s the greatest few weeks of his life. But he wakes again every morning cold and aching in the backseat of his car, all the money and comfort he’d had the night before merely a bittersweet memory.

It starts to get old. He starts to dread falling asleep and losing everything. He stops spending the nights in his hotel room and starts trying to find new things to keep him entertained, sampling the Vegas nightlife.

He tries coke for the first time in his life, figuring he has nothing to lose. He’s been around the stuff often enough with Rico, but he’d never been stupid enough to try it, not just because Rico would have skinned him alive for it. But there’s no chance of addiction when his body will just reset, and Stan’s curious and desperate for something new, something he hasn’t already lived five times before, so he slips the dealer a wad of cash and does some lines in the bathroom.

It burns his nose and throat going down, before it starts going numb, and he pokes at his face experimentally to see how much he can still feel. And then he feels amazing all over, his entire body thrumming with lightning, with raw bottled sunshine, with the greatest feelings he’s ever felt, like when he’d first held all that money in his hands times a million. He feels invincible, like he could do anything and no one could ever hurt him again, like _nothing_ will ever hurt him again, not even the memory of Ford or the aching hole where he should fill.

He seeks out the same dealer the next few cycles, reveling in the feeling of feeling _amazing_ , of artificial happiness. The coke fills a void in him that’s been gaping and oozing and raw for years now. Who the hell needs a brother who doesn’t care when you have drugs and a dance floor?

Then one cycle he takes too much, and overdosing turns out to be the worst way to go so far, drawn out and awful at every step. It turns him against drugs pretty easily.

So he turns to people to fill the void. Drunk people don’t seem too turned off by his smell or his dirty clothes or his ratty hair, and dancing with someone, feeling their arms around him, feeling loved for one brief moment, even if it’s only physically, is almost as much of a high as the coke.

He goes through so many cycles he thinks he dances with just about every single willing person in every single nightclub, sometimes trading kisses and sometimes even more, learning every name and then forgetting it just as easily the next time around because what does it even matter when they won’t remember Stan the next time he appears.

He sinks himself in people, in physical touch, in music and sweat and adrenaline, and tries to tell himself he isn’t miserable. How could he possibly be miserable when he has the power to get rich every night and live like a king? How could he be miserable when he has the power to do anything he wants? How could he still feel so lonely when he can have his pick of willing people every single night?

But he is.

Lonely.

Miserable.

The days drag on. Eventually, even holding the money he wins doesn’t spark any joy in him, just the dull acceptance that this is happening again. He goes through the steps lifelessly, drifting from one moment to the next, from one place to the next, and the world feels dull and empty around him. Every morning, he reaches into his pockets hopefully, even though he knows the money is gone, the comforts are gone, the food is gone. What good even is the money if he can’t leave this one night of comfort? If he can’t use it to see the world or buy a house or return to his family?

“Honey, are you okay?”

Stan looks up. There’s a woman in a sequined dress standing across from him. She looks cold, rubbing at her arms to warm them, teetering slightly on her thin heels. Her face is caked in both makeup and sympathy, and Stan comes back into awareness of the world and realizes he’s standing in the alleyway beside a nightclub sobbing his heart out, and he doesn’t know how long he’s been there.

“I’m fine,” he assures her, scrubbing a hand across his face to rub the tears away.

The woman doesn’t look convinced. He doesn’t blame her for not falling for it. It’s not his best lie.

He doesn’t recognize her and wonders if that means they’ve managed to miss each other every cycle or if Stan just can’t remember, and he feels slightly guilty if it’s the second case because she seems kind and deserves to be remembered.

“Do you—” she hesitates, twisting her mouth like she’s chewing on a thought. “Do you need some money?”

“Nah.” Stan shakes his head, then pulls a bundle of cash out of his pocket to show her. “I’m good. You don’t need to worry about me.”

“Oh.” She looks surprised. He doesn’t blame her. He doesn’t look like someone who has money. Come morning, he won’t. “Then is—is there some way I can help you? You just look really sad.”

He sees now that there are a few other women hovering a few feet away, watching them closely and whispering to each other. They must be her friends, waiting for her to stop trying to help the sad, pathetic man in the alley so they can get back to whatever night they had planned. Don’t worry, he wants to say. Tomorrow I won’t be here crying and your night won’t get ruined. 

“No, you can’t,” he says instead. She can’t make the money stick around overnight. She can’t help kick time back into working order so Stan can get on with his life. It's not much of a life, he'll admit, but at least it goes onwards.

But there is someone who can help him.

* * *

Ford looks surprised when he opens the door to find Stan standing there. He’s holding the crossbow again, though he drops it as soon as his eyes land on him, throwing it away from himself forcefully like he's been burned. His hands are awkward and twitchy once they're empty, like he's not sure what to do with them.

“Please,” Stan says, “tell me you figured out a way to fix this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize if this one felt a little more like filler, but most of this one was in Stan's head, and I wasn't sure how else to write him dealing with the unending, dull slog of repeating the same day over and over again alone. Now that Ford's back in the picture, things will hopefully get more interesting again.
> 
> Also in case it's not obvious, I know nothing about casinos, black jack, or cocaine lmao.  
> 
> 
> Yiddish:
> 
> Yemakh-shmoy - Yiddish version of the Hebrew curse yimakh shemo יִמַּח שְׁמוֹ ("May his name be erased")  
> 


	4. Facts and Red Flags

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again to everyone leaving comments! I love seeing everyone's questions and theories and ideas. Also I'm really glad to see that Ford is coming across better to most readers than he is Stan. That was the goal. :)
> 
> Speaking of Ford, I really underestimated how hard it is to write his dialogue and how hard it is to write a scientist talking about science things when I understand nothing about science and never will. Oh well. Going to just hope for the best and you're all going to have to go along with whatever bs explanations I have Ford say. Shrugs. 
> 
> Also....is four chapters in too late to change the title of a fic? Don't know what I would change it to, just not really vibing with this one.
> 
> Thanks again to all the awesome comments!!
> 
> Warnings: Very brief mention of suicide

Ford steps aside wordlessly and lets Stan into the house, then tucks himself away into the corner of the room farthest from Stan. It’s odd how both offense and pure relief bubble up in him at the move, neither quite cancelling each other out but settling down beside each other as the most uncomfortable of bedfellows. He feels itchy and out of place, unsettled and scared, and Ford is unreadable, coiled tight and clutching his upper arms in a sort of one-manned hug. 

He won’t meet Stan’s eyes.

“So?” Stan asks finally, sitting down on the t-rex fossil since it’s the only place in the room to sit. Ford seems to have a thing against furniture. And comfort. “ _Do_ you have a way to fix this?”

“I’m working on it.” Ford answers stiffly. His eyes flicker up to Stan’s, then away. “Can I,” he starts and stumbles. Stan watches him pull something from his pocket and tries to hide the flinch, but he can’t help it or the way all his senses immediately scream _gun_.

Ford freezes, and what he’s pulled free is clear to see. It’s just a flashlight.

Stan feels foolish for the reaction, but he can’t calm his body down, can’t convince his mind that he’s somewhere safe when he’s been hurt so much in this house already, when everything instinct has marked his brother as an enemy and a threat and something he needs to get far away from immediately. 

Well, he tried that already.

Ford is a statue, frozen in place with the flashlight held aloft and his gaze staring into the empty space just off Stan’s shoulder, as if Stan’s flinch had knocked the life out of him. His face is pinched, drawn tight and wrinkled in an expression of pain. Stan waits for him to finish speaking, but Ford says nothing. He doesn’t even move.

“Can you what?” Stan prompts him finally, and Ford snaps back into awareness, pulling his gaze to his flashlight as he fumbles it in his hands. He pushes his glasses up higher on his nose where they’d been slipping.

He clears his throat. “Could I check your eyes? If you wouldn’t mind?” And then softer, desperate, with none of the usual practiced bravado, “ _Please_?”

The vulnerability is shocking enough that Stan can do nothing but nod. At the permission, Ford steps into his space carefully and quickly shines the light from one eye to the other. Whatever he sees must reassure him; he nods to himself, letting out a deep breath Stan hadn’t realized he’d been holding, then retreats back to his side of the room.

The air between them is thick enough to choke on. It feels heavy enough to force them into the floorboards and bury them.

Stan clears his throat just to fill the room with something else, some sound but the unbearable, deafening silence. He pulls his jacket tighter around him; is it just him, or is Ford’s house barely warmer than the freezing winter air outside?

“How close to fixing this is ‘working on it’?” he manages to force out.

Ford lets out another rattling sigh. He hasn’t put the flashlight away, but twists and turns it over and over in his hands. “I’m not sure. This is a completely unforeseen effect of the portal that I had not thought to prepare for. It wasn’t meant to work like this at all.”

Stan has rarely heard Ford sound so completely out of his element when discussing something that didn’t involve social interactions. “You invented it, right?”

Ford hesitates. He finally abandons his wringing of the flashlight, slipping it back into his coat pocket so he can use a free hand to run anxiously through his hair. The curls are just as bad as Stan’s, matted and tangled, greasy and unwashed. It's longer on the nape of his neck than Stan’s ever seen him wear it and he wonders if it’s a choice or just neglect. He looks too dirty and worn for someone with a roof over their head and access to a shower, and Stan can’t help but wonder just what Ford has been up to that’s gotten him so out of sorts. He doesn’t have to be a genius to see there’s something wrong with his brother.

“Yes, of course I did,” Ford answers finally. “But affecting time wasn’t the intended use of the portal. It was devised as an entrance into other worlds. Which I had believed it to be capable of! Hence the problem!” Ford waves his hands through the air to accentuate his point, apparently unaware that his audience is completely lost. “In all our tests it appeared to act as a gateway from our world to another—a means to travel between! Nothing indicated that it would affect time, and certainly not that it would create a scenario like this.”

Stan stops trying to follow Ford’s rambling explanation. There’s something about his brother’s voice that doesn’t sit right with him, though he can’t quite pinpoint what it is. The overly formal words certainly sound like Ford. He’d always talked like he’d eaten a dictionary for lunch, and it’d only gotten worse the older he’d gotten. It’s not surprising that it’s even worse now that he’s earned an actual degree.

The speech patterns and words are all right, but something about the sound of it feels like a stranger, but the more Stan tries to chase the cause of his discomfort the more it eludes him.

“I’m confident I will be able to find a way to stop the loop eventually,” Ford says in the midst of his incoherent rambling, grabbing Stan’s attention once more. “But I have been a little more preoccupied with—” He hesitates again, swallowing whatever had been on the tip of his tongue. “Other things.”

“What?!” Stan exclaims, leaping to his feet. Ford takes a step backwards to compensate for the lost space and runs into the wall at his back. He seems surprised it’s there, catching his balance by throwing a hand back to steady himself. “What else could _possibly_ be more important than fixing this?”

“This time loop is exactly what I need!” Ford argues, and Stan is amazed that it only took them ten minutes for him to want to smack the arrogance off his brother’s face. 

Has Ford always been this self-absorbed? Had he grown into it when their principle handed him a brochure and told him how special he was or had Stan just missed the early signs? So many of his early memories are tainted by bitterness and longing in equal parts, and he can’t remember them clearly enough to know if the brother who looked out for him and supported him when no one else would and _cared_ was reality or just a desperate figment of his own imagination.

He wants to hit him. He wants to hit him so _badly_. He clenches his hands into fists hard enough that he feels the sting in his palms and sticks to yelling instead. 

“Oh, well, good for you, Ford! Glad it’s working out for you just like everything does!”

Ford sputters indignantly. “That is _not_ true!” 

Which is absolute bullshit from where Stan’s standing, here in Ford’s fancy house with more space than he needs, filled with a million things he probably doesn’t use and clearly doesn’t even take care of if the way everything is haphazardly stacked and tossed aside is any indication.

“I want to get back to my life!” Stan yells.

It’s not much of one, but Ford doesn’t need to know that. And it’s his. It’s _his,_ and he’s going to make something of it one day, make something of himself and rub it in everyone’s face, but he can’t do that if he can’t move past this one awful day.

Ford opens his mouth to argue back, no doubt to tell Stan just how much more important his own needs are than Stan’s, how Stan just won’t understand it because Ford is so talented and so brilliant and Stan’s always been the idiot, and he feels nauseous just at the thought of it, angry enough to throw up, so he goes for the killing blow. 

“And you _owe_ me.”

Ford’s mouth snaps closed. 

The only sound in the room is Stan’s heavy breathing; it beats against his ears like an ugly, pounding drum. _You’re not going to freak out_ , he tells his body stubbornly. He refuses to fall apart in front of Ford over this again. It’s been at least months by now, and he’s been through bad things before. He’s over it.

His racing pulse begs to differ.

Luckily, Ford doesn’t look like he’s doing much better. He looks just shades away from being physically sick. For a moment, he leans against the wall like it’s the only thing keeping him standing, and then he regains himself, pushing himself upright. He takes a deep breath in the stilted quiet way one does when trying to be discrete and attempts to straighten his tie.

“I don’t know how long it will take me,” Ford reiterates. He focuses on straightening out his coat sleeves, unbuttoning and re-buttoning them for no clear reason other than to give his hands something to do. “But you’re right. Returning us to our original timeline and destabilizing the loop should be my first priority. I mean, who even knows how long the loop can last before collapsing on its own with us inside. Or causing even more drastic changes to the natural flow of time.”

Stan feels his stomach sinking. Suddenly it’s too much effort to stand. He collapses back on the skull. “Wasn’t aware those were things we should worry about.”

Ford shrugs. “They’re not out of the realm of possibility.” 

“Great.” Stan kneads at the bridge of his nose. He can already feel a stress headache forming. “Well, why don’t we just try going back through the portal? That’s what caused all of this in the first place, right?”

Ford is shaking his head before Stan even finishes his suggestion. “The risk of putting ourselves in a worse situation is too great. There’s just as much possibility that going back through the portal could also collapse the loop and this alternate timeline we are now in. We could accidentally wipe ourselves out of existence altogether.”

Stan shudders at the thought. “Noted. Let’s avoid that. Well, what else do you suggest? Because I’ve tried a lot already and nothing’s working.”

“That’s a good point, actually. We should probably compare our experiences with the loop so far.” Ford starts searching for something, moving discarded bins and books aside. “Do you see a clean sheet of paper anywhere?”

Stan sees everything but a clean piece of paper in Ford’s cluttered living room. There’s plenty of paper, but most of it is already covered in blueprints and equations. A few scattered sketches seem to depict the portal downstairs, though half of the writing on it doesn’t look anything like his brother’s.

He stoops to shuffle through the small pile near him. One sheet in particular buried halfway through the pile catches his eye. It was once originally covered with nonsensical schematics and equations in his brother’s typical neat cursive but has since been scribbled over wildly with dark, frantic pen strokes, blotting out the information beneath. Large block letters fill the empty spaces left, and though it’s hard to read anything clearly, the words ‘ _he’s watching me’_ leap out amidst the mess. 

It’s enough to steal the breath from his throat.

It’s clearly his brother’s writing, the same messy, hurried print that had accompanied the postcard. The terror practically leaps off the page.

“Ah, here’s some,” Ford exclaims triumphantly, pulling a piece out from underneath a box of machinery. Stan makes a split-second decision. He quickly folds the paper and slips it into his coat sleeve. Ford remains oblivious as he searches for a pen.

“Alright,” Ford says finally, pen in hand. He stations himself near the bookshelf so he can write against it. “Tell me as much as you can about your experiences with this.”

Stan thinks of the drugs and the clubs and the bodies. He thinks of drowning himself in food and booze and sex. He thinks about how it felt to die, not just once, but enough times that he can form a preference. It feels shameful and vulnerable and pathetic to voice any of it aloud. 

He shrugs, shoving all those thoughts and memories down deep where he won’t have to think about them. “I don’t know. I keep repeating November 5th over and over again. Same as you, probably.”

“Oh, is that the date?” Ford asks distractedly, though he doesn’t wait for confirmation. “Keep going.”

“Um.” Stan runs a hand through his hair. “Every time I fall asleep I wake back up where I started on November 5th. Everything goes back exactly to how it was. It’s like the whole world resets.”

“Right, right,” Ford says, nodding along as he writes. “It works the same for me. Falling asleep resets things. So does any form of unconsciousness. As well as—” He hesitates, hand faltering on the paper.

Stan fills in the blank for him. “Dying?” 

“Right. Dying,” Ford echoes quietly.

Stan roughly clears his throat. He can feel his heart beating faster, and he wishes he could command it to stop. “Yeah, dying definitely resets things,” he says, going for nonchalance and overshooting it by a mile, though he hopes Ford doesn’t notice. “Tested that one plenty. Three times, actually.”

“Three times?!” Ford shouts, dropping the pen. He looks up at Stan with wide eyes. “What do you mean three times?” he demands.

Stan crosses his arms, shifting uncomfortably. “I mean I’ve died three times. Three different ways. Nothing changes.”

Ford stares at him. He fumbles on a response, opening and closing his mouth like a stranded fish. “How could you have possibly died three times? What in the world have you been doing?!” For some reason, he sounds angry, his voice rising higher in pitch until it’s an assault on Stan’s ears.

“I don’t know,” he says, feeling defensive. Is everything they talk about going to eventually turn into a fight? “It just happened, alright?”

“It just—how did it just happen?” Ford seems to realize something. When he continues, his voice is soft and hesitant, as if he doesn't want to fully voice the thought. “You didn’t—you didn’t try to break the loop on purpose, right?”

It takes Stan a second to realize what Ford’s asking. “No, I did not try to kill myself, Ford,” he scoffs. “Look, they were all accidents. But the one good thing about the loop is that it doesn’t matter. I’m still here and kicking. Let’s drop it okay?”

Ford’s mouth twists with displeasure. It’s obvious he does not want to drop it at all, though Stan can’t imagine what more he has to say on the matter. Still, in a rare move of generosity, Ford listens to him and moves on. He picks his pen back up and begins working on his notes again.

“Fine,” he snaps. “Dying clearly works as a reset, too. All items and surroundings return to how they were the morning of November 5th. All injuries reset as well. Anything else?”

“People. People reset too,” Stan offers. “We’re the only ones aware of things repeating. Everyone else just keeps going through the same motions over and over again like it’s the first time they’ve lived it.”

“Really?” Ford asks curiously, jotting it down.

“Yeah. They don’t change anything unless I did something to affect them. People I met wouldn’t even remember me the next time things reset. I guess it’s because we’re the only ones who went through the portal.”

“Fascinating,” Ford says, and Stan eyes him incredulously. This can not be the first time he’s learning of this. It’s not hard to realize no one else was aware they were reliving the same day over and over again.

“Ford, have you interacted with a single person since this started? Have you even left your house?"

Ford looks up from his paper, and he must see the judgement clear on Stan’s face, because he gets defensive. “I haven’t had any need to.”

It’s such a Ford answer that Stan can’t help but roll his eyes. “What about for your own sanity?”

Ford scoffs. “Well then going out and meeting people would be counterproductive.”

“You can’t seriously mean to tell me you haven’t spoken with another person since this started? It’s been—” Stan hesitates, unsure. To be honest, he’d lost count by the second week and didn’t have any real idea how many November 5’s he’s lived through. “At least a couple months. You haven’t talked to anyone?”

“I’ve talked to you,” Ford mutters petulantly.

Not going out doesn’t seem to be a response to the time loop nonsense. If anything, it seems like a habit. The barbed wire fence and threatening signs lining Ford’s yard come to mind.

Stan lets out a deep sigh. It’s not his job to protect Ford anymore, but some part of him just can’t help the disappointment he feels. “Ford, do you ever talk to anyone? You live like twenty minutes from a town. You ever go there at all?”

“Not often,” Ford answers. “But there isn’t much reason to, and I hardly see a problem with it.” He gestures towards the mess of his living room. “My work keeps me occupied. I don’t have time to go engage in small talk with the locals.”

Of course, Stan thinks. Why was he even surprised? People have never mattered to Ford as much as his work did.

“Is that it?” Ford asks, eyes back on his paper.

“Yeah, that’s it,” Stan says weakly. All the energy has drained out of him. He wants to curl up somewhere warm and sleep until this is all over. 

His hunger chooses that moment to remind him it’s still there with an echoing rumble, and Stan jumps on the excuse to leave the room.

“Where’s your kitchen?” he asks.

Ford’s only answer is a distracted hum as he scribbles frantically across the paper. There’s already very little free space left. Ford pauses, mutters something to himself, then glances around the room. “There should be blueprints around here somewhere,” he mumbles under his breath. Stan tries not to glance down at his coat sleeve where the blueprint he’d stashed lies hidden.

“Ford,” he calls louder, grabbing his brother’s attention. “Where’s your kitchen? I’m starving.”

“Oh. Through there.” Ford gestures at a door, then resumes his search.

The kitchen is the only place in the house not completely covered in papers and books. That doesn’t mean it’s in any better condition. It looks like it hasn’t been cleaned in weeks, and Stan can practically hear his father’s angry scolding just looking at it. There’s a half-eaten sandwich decaying on the kitchen table. A forgotten pile of potatoes are starting to sprout eyes. A myriad of coffee mugs spot the room, each with a varying amount of coffee still inside.

The thing most out of place, however, is the decently sized pile of cookbooks sitting on the kitchen counter. Stan picks the top one up and examines it curiously.

 _Traditional Southern Cooking_ , the title reads. Stan flips to one of the dog-eared pages to find a recipe for sweet potato pie, a dish which he can’t imagine his brother eating. Confused, but not all that invested, Stan drops the book back onto the pile and opens the fridge. 

A single half-empty bottle of ketchup and a bag that might once have been filled with sandwich meat but currently resembles a science experiment gone wrong greets him. Disgusted, Stan slams the fridge closed again and moves to the cabinets, which don’t prove any more helpful.

If Ford hasn’t left his house in months, then what the hell has he even been eating?

Stan storms back into the main room. Ford doesn’t appear to have even noticed he left. “Stanford. Where the hell is your food?”

Ford freezes while shuffling through papers. He blinks up at Stan owlishly. “In the kitchen, I would assume.” He squints at him. “Is this a trick question?”

Stan rolls his eyes. “No, it’s a real one. There’s no food in your kitchen.”

The confusion leaves Ford’s face. “Ah. Yes. Well, it’s been awhile since I’ve gotten groceries.”

Stan snorts. “Clearly. What the hell have you been eating then?”

Ford hesitates.

Stan raises an eyebrow. “ _Have_ you been eating?”

“It’s not as if I’m in any danger of starving,” Ford says instead, which is answer enough. “Our bodies reset every cycle, which means I constantly stay in the same state of nourishment.”

He says it as if that’s a perfectly acceptable answer and not completely insane. Stan knows what it feels like to go a full day without eating, and, with the state of Ford’s kitchen, chances are it’s been more than just a day. The fact that he seems perfectly fine staying hungry for however long it’s been is more than just ridiculous, it’s downright troubling.

It’s also completely incomprehensible to someone who knows hunger as familiarly as Stan does. “Why the hell haven’t you just gone and gotten food?”

Ford shrugs. He’s already losing interest in Stan and refocusing back on his papers. “It hasn’t been that important.”

“Fine,” Stan says. If Ford wants to starve himself, then Stan’s not going to stop him. He holds out a hand. “Give me some money.” He hates begging, but he spent the last of his money on the way here and he’s not going to stoop to eating plain ketchup out of Ford’s fridge. 

Ford stares at him in confusion. “Why?”

“For groceries," Stan says exasperatedly. "I’m going to go get some.”

“Why can’t you just use your own?”

“Because I keep having to waste all my cash on gas money to make it out here, and the least you can do is feed me,” Stan says, hoping that Ford won’t look too much more into that answer and realize that by cash Stan means all the money he owns. He can’t stomach the idea of Ford realizing just how badly off Stan really is.

Luckily, Ford seems to accept that argument. He sets the papers down and spins in a circle, scanning the room. “Fine, I just,” he pauses, digging his hands into his coat pockets and searching, “need to find my wallet.”

They eventually find it in Ford’s bedroom, and Stan wonders how neither of them thought to check there first. He feels slightly relieved to see that Ford does in fact own a bed, even if he seems to not agree with couches. Ford rifles through the wallet and comes up with a crinkled five dollar bill.

He stares at it for a moment, then hands it over. “This is apparently all I have, so it will have to do.”

Stan gapes at him. “What do you mean it’s all you have? What about your big fancy grant?” Ma hadn’t stopped talking about it the first time he’d called after it happened, too proud of Ford to recognize that Stan might not be in the best place to hear about how much money Ford was making. Not that he’d ever been honest with her about his situation, but he doubts it was that hard to piece together.

Ford shrugs. He looks uncomfortable. “I believe I forgot to renew it. I’ve been...distracted. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to focus on solving this problem of ours.”

Stan stares at his retreating back, clutching the wrinkled five dollar bill in hand, utterly baffled.

* * *

Stan buys hotdogs because they’re cheap and hard to fuck up, and it’s only halfway through cooking his second that he even thinks to wonder whether Ford still keeps kosher. The kitchen doesn’t look super kosher-friendly, but it probably would have been considerate of him to ask before bringing pork into the house. 

After contemplating the hotdog for a moment, Stan shrugs. If Ford has a problem with it, he's certain he'll hear about it soon enough.

After eating his fill, he sticks his head out into the main room to let Ford know there’s food available. He might not be happy with his brother, but he still can’t in good conscience let him starve. But Ford is nowhere to be seen. A knock on his bedroom door reveals that the room is also empty, which leaves the secret basement that Stan has absolutely no desire to reenter. He sticks the hotdogs in the fridge and figures that if Ford finally starts registering hunger like a normal person, he can come find them himself.

With Ford busy in the basement, Stan has the perfect opportunity to start snooping, which he takes gladly. He pokes his head back in Ford’s bedroom, giving it another curious glance over, though it doesn’t prove all that interesting. A bed and a million books; it looks just like his bedroom at home had.

He finds a closet that probably should have been filled with linens and housekeeping items, though Ford has apparently decided to fill it with questionable chemicals. The upstairs hosts a second bedroom, which is rather odd considering Ford’s apparent view on guests, and more storage.

He assumes the last room left on the main floor is the bathroom, though he decides to peek inside anyways just to check. He opens the door and fumbles a hand along the wall until he finds the light switch, flipping it on.

And feels his heart plummet to his feet at the sight.

It is a bathroom, and it would be an unassuming one if it weren’t covered with blood. There are bloody fingerprints along the porcelain sink and walls, a bloody handprint slapped on the mirror like something out of a horror movie. There’s a long-dried stain on the hardwood floor, as well as streaks and drips that haven’t been fully washed away from the sink itself. The trashcan is overflowing with bloody bandages.

Stan throws a hand over his mouth, staring in shock and horror at the grisly sight. Just what the hell has his brother been doing? He thinks of Ford’s aversion to people and wonders suddenly if it isn’t outright fear, if the signs and the fence outside were less about Ford being an asshole who doesn’t like strangers and more the act of someone desperate and terrified.

He remembers the paper he’d stashed in his coat and pulls it free, unfolding it to get another look at the frightened words scrawled across the page. 

_I’ve hidden my journal already but must remind myself trust no one trust no one_

_he’s watching me constantly I know he’s watching me_ _  
_

_he could be anyone_

Stan’s mouth feels dry; he tries to swallow, but the sudden lump forming in his throat makes it hard to.

Just what the hell has his brother been doing, he thinks again.

And just what has he gotten himself into?


	5. Missteps

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always thank you for your comments!
> 
> I tried to get this out before Christmas, but that didn’t happen, so I hope everyone who celebrates had a wonderful Christmas! I also completely forgot to wish people a Happy Hanukkah last chapter, so hope everyone had a great Hanukkah too. :)
> 
> Additional warnings for this chapter: mentions of an eating disorder

Ford looks surprised when Stan shows up again the next day, but he lets him in without question, although he does subject him to the flashlight test again, which Stan puts up with without comment. It’s way too early to start another fight, and he’d have to be blind to not notice how much the weird ritual seems to reassure Ford.

As soon as Stan passes the test, Ford moves to reset a large number of locks and deadbolts attached to the front door that Stan hadn’t even noticed until now. There are five in total, four that look like they’ve been added with an unskilled hand, surrounded by shaky lines carved through the wood by a drill that’s missed its mark. Ford must have been too distracted in the previous cycles to redo the locks, but now he does so methodically, turning one after the other with a resounding click. The sound echoes through Stan’s head like a warning siren.

 _He’s unstable_ , Stan’s instincts warn, badgering him like a particularly aggressive mosquito that won’t be shooed away. From where he stands, he can spot the crossbow propped against the wall, loaded and ready to use. A chill runs icy fingers down his spine. It takes everything in him not to immediately bolt out the door again.

Between the locks and the blood and the paranoid notes, the pieces are starting to form a picture Stan’s not all that sure he actually wants to solve. And yet, at the very same time, he wants so desperately to know what new monster has plagued his brother so he can do what he’s always done and fight it off for him.

But no, that’s not his job anymore. Ford certainly wouldn’t thank him for it, and, if anything, Ford’s the monster plaguing Stan now, the cold fury of his voice, the hatred burning in his eyes as he’d aimed haunting Stan’s nightmares—well, if he was able to have any. As soon as the loop is fixed, Stan’s out of here, granting Ford his wish of staying far, far away from him.

In the following week, the two of them settle easily into a routine, but only because they avoid each other as much as possible. Ford lets Stan in, checks his eyes, resets the locks, then disappears into the secret basement behind the bookcase. And Stan, left alone in a strange house filled with strange things, snoops.

He finds more blueprints and abandoned projects. He finds signs of neglect in the form of leaky sinks, monstrous dust bunnies, and moldy coffee mugs scattered in places you’d least expect. He finds notices for bills and Ford’s grant renewal left forgotten in piles on the kitchen table, each dated months ago. It’s apparently a miracle the electricity is still on, because Stan is starting to suspect the cause of the chilly air isn’t just their relationship, but the heater getting shut off. Ford is forgetful on the best of days but there’s no way paying the heating bill in the middle of winter in Northern Oregon just slipped his mind. It’s lucky there’s a fireplace in the main room and a large supply of firewood stacked just outside the house so Stan can at least get enough heat going that he doesn’t feel in danger of losing any fingers.

He finds an unusual number of triangles, too. They’re everywhere, built into the decor and the windows, an odd design choice that hadn’t been all that strange until he’d started finding them in other odd places too, carved into the lintels of the doors by hand, scribbled and crossed out on a handful of notes. In one overflowing trashcan, he finds discarded figurines. They’re heavy when he picks them up, gold-coated but likely metal underneath, and of questionable purpose. Bookend? Paper weight? Unsure, he drops it back into the trashcan and moves on. 

What Stan fails to find buried amongst the wreckage of his brother’s house, however, is any real explanation for the blood or the locks or the note, no matter how many rooms he turns inside out. After a couple days of searching, he starts to suspect the answers he wants are kept hidden in the journal Ford had tried to send him off with. He’s seen it a few times since, tucked in a pocket of Ford’s coat.

In the absence of answers, Stan comes up with theories. Maybe the impressive grant Ma had raved about had fallen through long before Ford forgot to renew, and Ford had gotten involved with a loan shark. It would certainly explain the lack of money, and it wouldn’t be the first time a Pines had made a deal they lived to regret. Stan himself was relieved Rico hadn’t followed him to Oregon. Adding him to the mix would make an already awful day so much worse. 

Or maybe it’s drugs, Stan muses as he rifles through Ford’s bookshelf. His brother had always had a terrible habit of trying to replace good old sleep with caffeine, and Stan can only imagine what he’d do if he decided speed was a better solution. Ford’s twitchy like someone on drugs, and the bloodshot eyes could be drug use just as easily as they could be exhaustion. Even the paranoia tracks; Stan’s seen plenty of junkies convinced someone was out to get them, jumpy and frightened and hallucinating.

Stan pauses while flipping absentmindedly through a physics book, one hand hovering in midair over the words he wasn’t really digesting as he thinks about it.

It almost makes too much sense. 

The bloodshot eyes. The shakiness. The paranoia. Forgetting important responsibilities like paying the bills on time. Even the strange flashlight check Ford insists on might make some sort of sense in the addled mind of an addict.

“Holy shit,” Stan mutters, closing the book in his hands with a loud snap, then falling prey to a coughing fit as a cloud of dust smacks him in the face. 

Clearing his throat, he sets the book back on the shelf as he thinks about it. Drug use make sense. In fact, it makes sense of every single thing about Ford and his house in the woods that _doesn’t_ make sense, and Stan himself knows how easy it is to get hooked chasing the thrill of adrenaline and dopamine.

And yet in the full week or so that he’s been searching the nooks and crannies of Ford’s house, he hasn’t seen any real evidence of drug use. No stash. No needles. Nothing to actually prove his theory.

Deep in thought, Stan goes through the motions of grabbing another book from the shelf. Only it doesn’t come free fully from the wall, pulling forward about an inch before halting with a click, followed by a deep rumble as the entire bookshelf moves out of the way to reveal the stairs down to the basement. 

Stan stares in shock. He’d known the entrance was hidden behind the bookshelf, but Ford had always made him turn and look the other way as he’d opened it, likely for the same reason he kept checking Stan’s eyes or had five deadbolts securing his front door.

Stan glances at the title that’d unlocked it. _Journey to the Center of the Earth_. He snorts. Good to see Ford’s sense of humor hasn’t improved any.

He eyes the stairs warily, wondering if sating his own curiosity is worth taking another trip down to the portal that started this mess and a brother who doesn’t want anything to do with him. He’s thoroughly explored the main levels of the house; the basement might at least offer up some new clues and— _oh_. 

Ford’s stash.

Maybe that’s where it’s hidden.

Stan shifts from foot to foot, debating. To be perfectly honest, the thought of going back in the basement makes him sick. That portal down there absolutely terrifies him; he can still remember the way fear had frozen him in place as he’d watched it steal his brother away from him, or the absolute heart-stopping moment of clarity when he’d realized it was about to devour him too.

A shiver passes through him. He rubs at his arms to bring some feeling back into them. The bit of heat the fireplace manages to put out suddenly feels like far too little. 

One thing is for sure, he can’t go down without a good excuse. He’s not in the mood to weather the fight that would erupt if Ford realizes he’s snooping. 

A couple minutes later, armed with a roast beef sandwich, Stan braves the basement once more. Unlike the rest of the house, it's relatively neat, most of the mess contained to the control station where Ford now sits, hunched over a pile of blueprints and notes and his journal, which lies open on what looks like schematics. Beyond him looms the portal, large and impressive and terrifying.

Stan clears his throat to grab Ford’s attention, but before he can say a word, Ford startles, stands, and spins to face Stan. He throws his arms out wide, guarding his notes from Stan’s view.

“How did you know how to get down here?!” Ford barks, fumbling in his pocket for his flashlight. 

Stan throws his free hand up in a sign of peace. “Woah, hey, calm down. I knew it was behind the bookcase, so I just found out which book opened it.”

The answer doesn’t seem to appease Ford much. He’s stiff, his face a perfect picture of distrust. “Why are you down here, Stanley?” he hisses, glancing behind him at the portal before facing Stan again with laser focus.

Stan holds up the sandwich. “Thought you could use some food.”

Ford eyes the plate suspiciously, then holds the flashlight up. “I need to check your eyes.”

Stan groans, rolling his eyes towards the ceiling. “Again? Haven’t we been through this already today?”

If Ford was a cat, Stan’s pretty sure his fur would be standing on end right now. “If you won’t let me check your eyes, then you have to leave.”

“Alright, fine, geez,” Stan huffs, letting Ford shine his light directly in his eyes again. Satisfied, Ford sits down again at his desk while Stan blinks rapidly to clear his vision. His brother seems to have forgotten the sandwich completely, so Stan sets it down beside him. “Alright, I did your check. Now eat the sandwich.”

“I’m not hungry,” Ford says, pushing the plate off of his notes.

Stan leans over his shoulder, eyeing them curiously, and gets the stinkeye in response. “I know that’s a lie,” he says, taking a step back to calm Ford down. “You haven’t eaten in at least a day.”

Ford shrugs. “I’m not lying. I’m not hungry.”

Stan pinches the bridge of his nose. Forget building inter-dimensional time portals, Ford’s one true skill is giving Stan a headache in under five minutes. “Stanford. Eat the sandwich.”

Ford looks up at the sandwich and contemplates it for far longer than necessary. It’s a perfectly normal roast beef sandwich, and if he hasn’t eat in days, he really shouldn’t be so picky.

Only, it doesn’t quite look like stubbornness on his face as he stares at it, mouth twisting uneasily. It looks like nausea. 

It looks like fear.

“No, thank you,” he says finally, pushing the plate further away from him until it’s in danger of teetering off the edge. Stan grabs it before it can and places it on top of a control panel, then watches his brother intently, as if staring hard enough could open him up like a piece of machinery and reveal all his secrets, expose all the problems that need fixing.

It doesn’t sit right with him the way Ford is refusing to eat. It settles somewhere in the bottom of his stomach like a rock. He opens and closes his hands into fists, unsure what to do with them. The portal looms monstrously in the background.

Stan suddenly doesn’t want to be down here any more.

“Making any progress?” he asks, grasping for a change of subject.

Ford’s shoulders stiffen. He ducks his head lower, until all Stan can really see is the tips of his ears and his wild hair. “Slowly. I’m working on it.” It doesn’t feel like an answer. It feels like a defense.

Stan backs up. “Well, I’ll leave you to it.”

He forces himself to leave at a normal pace so it feels less like fleeing.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Ford’s aversion to food nibbles on him. As he flips through his books in search of something to occupy himself. As he pokes around Ford’s bedroom for a third time in search of anything he’s missed. As he makes the drive to Ford’s over and over again each morning. Like a leech sucking the life out of him agonizingly slow, it lingers. 

He has no lost love for his brother anymore. Not now, not after so many missed starts and wrong turns, and yet still the worry lingers, until Stan can’t avoid the conclusion taking shape in his head. 

Ford is starving himself. On purpose.

Stan stumbles to a stop in the aisles of Gravity Fall’s ma-and-pop general store, the thought horrific and grounding, begging him to lay down his anger and rush to his brother’s side, wrap him in comfort and protection until Ford feels safe. Safe in a way that speaks of home, the kind of safe Stan hasn’t felt in ten years.

Because of Ford. Because of his project and his blame and his voice rising in anger until their father heard it. Because he turned his back and shut the bedroom curtains.

What right does Ford have to safety? What right does he have to pity when he has the opportunity to eat and rejects it, when at so many points Stan would have given everything to be given a sandwich and some kindness?

He lets out a groan, burying his face in his hands right there in the middle of the store, ignoring the look the old woman at the cash register gives him. 

But what right does Stan have to turn his back on family that needs him? No matter what Ford has done, no matter how little his help is wanted, Stan can’t just let it go. To do so would go against everything he is.

Feeling defeated, he raises his head and sees before him a bag of potatoes. It feels like a sign, if Stan were inclined to believe in such things.

  
  


* * *

Caryn Pines had had a foolproof system for holidays. As soon as her boys were old enough to help her in the kitchen without burning themselves, she’d assigned them each an important role, overseeing them with both a stern eye and playful grin. Sherman had been the only real cook between the three of them. Stan was too much of a klutz or too easily distracted, and Ford’s determination failed to result in any real talent. 

But during holidays, it was all hands on deck, and Caryn found at least one role for each of her boys she knew they would excel in. For Stan during Hanukkah, it was always latkes, and now, ten years removed from family dinners, his hands still find the movements easily, settling into well-traveled patterns. 

As he rings the potatoes dry, he half-expects to look over his shoulder and see his Ma working on the sufganiyot or Sherman dancing along to the radio as he chopped vegetables. He can picture his Pa at the table reading a book, silent but present, and Ford, staring down a ball of challah dough as he wrestled it into submission. Bread duty had been the only real place Ford succeeded in the kitchen; he’d once told Stan it was just like chemistry, and therefore the one thing that really clicked for him.

The memory feels warm and comforting for a brief moment before the figures fade and Stan remembers he’s standing alone in the kitchen of a brother who’s practically a stranger. Ford won’t appear and regale him with stories of the latest scientific findings as he braids bread dough. Sherman won’t playfully nudge him in the side as he walks by in an attempt to mess him up. Pa won’t ever give him another rare nod of approval as he took a bite of the food Stan had prepared.

Last Hanukkah, Stan had spent all eight days hungry and alone. The one before that he’d spent in jail. He’d spent Yom Kippur and Rosh HaShanah the same way. His hands still, clutching half-formed latke batter between them like a lifeline. A lump settles in his throat. Stubbornly, he sniffs a few times, pushing the tears back as he resumes his movement, flattening the latkes and setting them aside to fry.

He scrubs an arm over his eyes and takes a deep breath.

Family, Stan has realized, is a heavy, brutal thing. He wishes he had the courage to trim it away, but here he is, an unwanted fool making food for a brother who won’t eat it. 

The oil hisses loudly in the silent kitchen as he tosses the latkes in.

  
  


* * *

  
Stan takes it as a good sign that Ford doesn’t immediately check his eyes when he enters the lab this time, even if he does say, “I told you I’m not hungry,” without even looking up from his work.

Stan sets the plate in front of him anyways. “I cut myself on the grater making these.” He doesn’t know if guilt trips still work on his brother, but he’s not above trying.

Ford looks up and stills at the plate of latkes. His pen hovers forgotten in midair. “It’s not Hanukkah,” he says quietly.

Stan shrugs, pulling out a chair to sit beside him with his own plate. “Yeah, well, time is meaningless now. Also, I got this for you, you heathen.” He drops a jar of applesauce on the desk and slides it towards Ford like he’s seen bartenders do in Westerns.

Ford catches it before it goes over the edge. A smile tugs at the corner of his lips. “At least I don’t put relish on them.” If Stan didn’t know better, he’d think his voice sounds teasing.

“Hey, don’t knock it ‘til you try it.”

Ford ducks his head, but Stan still catches sight of his grin, small but genuine. Miraculously, he sets his pen down and grabs the applesauce. After spooning a generous amount onto his pile of latkes, he takes a bite. Stan holds his breath as he chews. No immediate judgement is passed. Ford finishes his bite in silence, then stares down at the plate, his expression pinching inwards with concentration as if the food before him is a scientific specimen worth studying.

“What?” Stan asks. “That bad?”

Ford shakes his head. “No, it’s not that.” His voice sounds miles away. “It tastes like Ma’s.”

“Oh.” It’s all Stan can say. Pride and homesickness wage a war in his chest.

“I haven’t been back for Hanukkah for years,” Ford continues, carefully cutting another bite. “Or Rosh HaShanah.” He pauses, thinks about it. “I don’t think I’ve been back at all since I graduated.”

Ford could have sucker-punched him and it wouldn’t have stung as much as that. Here Stan was, desperate to return home, longing aching in his joints like early onset arthritis, and Ford had just willingly thrown it away.

The latke tastes like ash in his mouth. With great effort, he manages to swallow, then abandons his fork on his plate, his appetite withering and dying. He can’t savor the victory of getting his brother to eat, too disgusted with Ford to stomach it. Maybe it should be a relief to hear the rest of the family was as easy to leave behind as Stan was, that no one was more important than Ford’s own brilliance.

It should be a relief, but it isn’t. It makes his skin feel tight and itchy. It makes his insides sour. Silently, he leaves the basement and tries not to let it hurt when Ford hardly seems to notice.

* * *

  
  


Weeks pass. Days blur. Stan makes the drive to Ford’s each morning, lets Ford check his eyes, watches him redo the locks, and tries to keep himself entertained. In the quiet spaces of Ford’s house, he mourns his brother all over again, along with their friendship and childhood for good measure. The presence of his brother is closer than it’s been in ten years, and yet just as distant, and it burns like an infected wound.

He can’t stop himself from taking Ford food, but he also can’t feel much joy at the fact that Ford starts eating a little bit more each time. He can’t feel much at all, insides as numb as the rest of him is in Ford’s freezing house. 

He doesn’t know how much more he can take here, close enough to touch his brother and yet impossibly far away.

“How much longer?”

He’s standing as far from Ford as he possibly can in the control room, watching him nibble on the sandwich he’s brought down for him. 

“It doesn’t work that way,” Ford replies. “I can’t just predict when I am going to find a solution.” 

Stan lets out a sigh, feeling drained and defeated. He lets his head knock back against the wall and stares up at the ceiling. “So, like a couple weeks? Another month? A year? What are we looking at?”

“I told you, I’m not sure,” Ford snaps.

Something burns in Stan’s chest, Ford’s irritation catching against something like a match against a matchbook, setting the whole thing ablaze. “Well, that’s just great, poindexter,” Stan snaps, the old nickname turning vile in his mouth. “Glad to hear you can’t even fix the problem _you_ caused.”

Ford throws his pen down and swivels his chair to face him. “None of this would have happened if you had just done what I told you to!”

Stan scoffs, throwing his hands in the air. “Oh, right. I forgot that everything in your life would be better if I just got far away from you. Well, trust me, I want to, but someone got me stuck in a time loop!” He’s yelling by the end, and the world ‘loop’ echos back at them from the metal walls like a taunt.

“You’re the one who pushed me in!” Ford yells back. The chair clangs against the desk as he leaps to his feet, then topples to the floor with a clatter. “You still can’t take responsibility for anything!”

“Is this about the science fair?” Stan dares to ask.

Ford throws his hands in the air as if he’s disgusted. “Of course it’s about the science fair!”

Stan’s chest feels rubbed raw. He feels on the verge of crying, so he screams instead. “I told you it was an accident, Ford!”

“You deliberately sabotaged my future!” Ford yells back, spit flying. His face is turning red.

Out of nowhere, it hits Stan what had been bothering him so much about his brother’s voice, the absence of it obvious now that it’s starting to return with his anger. His Jersey accent was gone.

“The fuck are you talking like that for?!” The question bursts out of him before he can fully process the thought.

The sudden subject change clearly throws Ford off guard, and he stumbles over whatever he had been about to say, his face a blend of both anger and confusion. “What?”

“All hoity toity like that!” Stan gestures at him angrily with his arm, waving it through the air as if to encompass not just Ford’s voice but all of him, the button-up shirt, the tie, the pretentious looking trench coat, the stupid cabin in the middle of the woods.

“Hoity toity?!” Ford sputters, offended.

“What the hell happened to your accent, asshole?” Stan demands, suddenly more angry about this than the existing argument. It’s obvious now how absent it had been from Ford’s pretentious, intellectual speech, and Stan knows that’s not something you lose easily after a few years of college. Two years in Colombia, one in a prison, and he still couldn’t completely rid his Spanish of the timbre of New Jersey.

No. That’s something you train yourself out of. 

Because it wasn’t enough for Ford to turn his back on Stan and avoid his family. It wasn’t enough to stop going home or celebrating the holidays. Ford had tried to clip away every single one of his roots, and that might be the worst thing Stan’s ever learned of his brother.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I’m talking about how you’re talking like some rich asshole from another city! What, too good to let people know you’re from Glass Shard Beach?” 

“As if anyone wants to be from Glass Shard Beach!” Ford snaps back, his accent stronger than ever, as if to mock both of them, and Stan feels like he’s going to erupt. 

Of course no one wanted to be from Glass Shard Beach. It was a shitty town with nothing going for it but the beach it was named for, and even that was nothing special.

Stan had been counting down the days he could leave same as Ford had, but he had never planned to wash himself free of their family. 

“You are such an asshole.”

Ford bristles. His face looks frightening in the low light, the shadows overtaking most of his face. “You don’t get to ruin my chances and then judge me for what I had to do!”

“It was a fucking college, Ford! You’re supposed to forgive your family when they mess up!”

“I don’t forgive you,” Ford says. He doesn’t scream it, but he might as well have for how powerfully it hits Stan, threatening to knock him off his feet.

It feels like Ford’s reached a hand inside his chest and ripped, shredding everything inside. 

Stan laughs, because he doesn’t know what else to do; it tastes bitter on his tongue. He throws his arms up. “There it is!” he crows, feeling weirdly disconnected from his body, as if it’s moving without his say so, his mouth running before his mind can fully process his thoughts. His heart is pounding wildly in his chest. “Well, I don’t forgive _you_ for getting me stuck in this crap. You don’t get to blame me for everything that goes wrong in your life. And it looks to me like everything went fine for you anyways. You got a nice house. You went to college. You got a fancy science grant that _you_ forgot to renew. Built a stupid portal that screwed up both of our lives. You’re the only one ruining your own life and some time you’re going to have to own up to the fact that you’re just an arrogant asshole who pushed your family away because you think you’re better than them!”

For a moment it seems that his words have shut Ford up. He leans back against the desk, holding onto it for support. His jaw is clenched tight, every part of him shaking. When he locks eyes with Stan again, they’re shining behind his glasses. “You couldn’t stand the fact that I was going places,” he hisses venomously. “You couldn’t just be happy for me and support me like a good brother would have!”

“All I ever did was support you!” Stan screams. “What about me, huh? Did you ever support me? We had a plan! And then you changed your mind and started talking about going to some fancy school across the country and acting like you wanted to get away from me!”

“I did.”

Stan reels back like he’s been hit. “What?”

Ford stares back at him, his face twisted up funny. He opens and closes his mouth a few times in silence, floundering on words. Stan can’t bring himself to say anything else; he feels carved open and breathless.

Ford looks down at the ground. His fingers clench tighter on the desk, his knuckles turning white. “I wanted space,” he whispers. It sounds louder than the yelling had. “Everyone always talked about us like we were just part of a set. It was always Stan and Ford, like we were exchangeable. And if I wasn’t a twin then I was just—” He hesitates, swallowing the words. He pulls his hands away from the desk, locking them behind his back and out of sight. “I never got to just be _me_.”

He looks up from the floor, gaze locking on Stan. “And you didn’t help,” he continues, his voice growing louder as he delivers hit after hit. “You always had to be a part of everything I was doing. I couldn’t do _anything_ without you inserting yourself. Taking advantage of me and trying to ride on my coattails.”

He sounds like a perfect echo of Filbrick Pines at his worst, as frigid and biting as a snowstorm. Stan opens his mouth to object, but no sound comes out, and Ford fills the empty space with more words, gaining speed as he goes, a boulder rolling faster and faster down the hill with no means of stopping without destroying something in its path.

“I just wanted to go somewhere alone where I could just be me! Not a twin, not the freak with six fingers, but me! And I had a chance, but you couldn’t let me have it! You couldn’t just let me have something for myself!”

The last word rings loudly in the small space. Ford gasps for air after his tirade.

“And what about me?” Stan asks finally in the stilted silence.

“What about you?” Ford snaps. “Was I just supposed to let you cling to me the rest of our lives because _you_ couldn’t handle being alone?!”

“No!” Stan shouts, “but I didn’t think staying with me was such a big fucking sacrifice for you!”

“Feh!” Ford throws his hands in the air. “You’re being overdramatic!”

“No, I’m being human, Ford! With emotions! Instead of whatever the hell you have that makes you so damn heartless!”

Ford’s face shuts down. Every part of him looks rigid and tight. “And you can’t imagine why I wouldn’t want to be stuck with you the rest of my life?” he snarls. “You haven’t grown up a bit! I made something of myself even after you ruined my chance. Of course I wasn’t going to sail the world on a floating piece of trash when I could do something worthwhile!”

Stan sees red. “You take that back! It wasn’t trash!”

“It was garbage, Stan, and it wasn’t ever going to sail! Maybe when we were kids it was fun to fix it up and dream about adventure, but there was more out there for me than stupid childhood dreams!” 

Stan punches him. Ford’s nose cracks loudly underneath his fist.

He lifts a hand up to it in a daze, trying to stop the blood that starts flowing, but it trickles between his fingers. His glasses sit crooked on his nose, the rims dented. He stares through them at Stan with a look of shock.

Stan shakes out his hand, ignoring the stinging in his knuckles. “Oh, did I break your nose?” he asks sarcastically sweet. “You know how many times I got my nose broken standing up for you?”

The shock in Ford’s eyes turns to anger. “I never asked you to!” he growls, swinging a fist back.

Once upon a time, Ford had been taught how to throw a decent punch, but years of academia must have made him forget, because his swing goes wide and Stan ducks out of the way easily, spinning on his heel to throw another punch Ford’s way. It clips the side of his cheek.

Ford stumbles back with the movement, tripping over the legs of the forgotten chair. He falls, and on the way down his head hits the side of the control panel with a sickening crack.

Stan waits for him to get up so they can keep going, the anger still simmering and begging for release. Ford doesn’t stand. He doesn’t even move.

“Ford?” Stan asks hesitantly. Fear overtakes the anger, turning his burning insides cold and hollow. “Stanford?”

He takes a step closer, and his breath catches in his throat. There’s a puddle of dark red blood slowly forming under Ford’s head.

“Stanford!” Stan yells, diving forward to reach his brother. He checks the back of Ford’s head in a panic; his fingers catch on something misshapen and broken, and he fights the urge to throw up. The puddle is growing bigger, and his hands on Ford’s head are dyed red with blood, and Ford isn’t moving at all. His chest isn’t even rising.

Stan is crying before he realizes it, great heaving sobs that make it hard to breathe. He searches desperately for a pulse, but there’s none to be found.

Ford is dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The only time I’ve made latkes I did in fact cut myself on the grater. 
> 
> Well, things for the boys are getting...worse. :(
> 
> The idea of Ford training himself out of his accent mostly came from the fact that Stan definitely sounds like he’s from Jersey and Ford does not. Ford’s reasons for this will definitely get touched on later.


	6. High Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys. I don't know why, but this was the hardest chapter of anything I've ever written in my life. I think I rewrote it like 5 times because nothing was working. So sorry for the delay; I really hope it was worth the wait. 
> 
> Also I changed the chapter title at the last minute and got a kick out of the fact that chapter six is "High Six." Total coincidence.
> 
> As always, thank you so much for all your comments, for sticking with this fic, and for letting my know your thoughts and predictions as we go. I really enjoy it. :)

Stan wonders if this is how Ford felt that first disastrous repeat: out of sorts and kind of numb, as if he’d been dunked in icy water and his body hadn’t reconnected with his brain yet. Dying would have been easier than dealing with the aftermath; one quick fall and then he’d be waking up again in the backseat of his car, familiar already with the familiar.

Now he has a body to deal with, or not deal with, as the case may be, considering tomorrow it won’t be a problem. And isn’t that the real question? Will it be a problem tomorrow? Stan has died and woken up again three times. He already knows the loop keeps him practically immortal, but Ford hadn’t clarified if he’d died yet during the cycles. Will death even work the same for him? 

And what would Stan do if it didn’t?

He buries his face in his hands. He’d run out of tears some time ago, though it’s unclear to him exactly how much time has passed since Ford fell. Everything seems hazy and out of focus. He feels untethered from the world around him, drifting out to sea on a rickety fishing boat just one bad wave from capsizing. He feels cold too, chilled to his very bones, although that might be because he’d used his coat as a makeshift burial shroud, too sick to handle the sight of Ford’s skin greying. The skin of Stan’s exposed arms is pimpling with goosebumps; he doesn’t even have the energy to rub any heat back into them.

He just has to fall asleep. As soon as he does everything will return to normal, and while normal isn’t great, it’s certainly better than right now. Unfortunately, sleep stays stubbornly out of reach. 

Eventually, Stan stumbles to his feet and towards the elevator. He considers carrying Ford upstairs, but there’s not much point. Nothing’s going to change if he moves him to a bed, and he feels far too weak and shaky to even manage it. He leaves the coat where it is, the closest to a burial he’s going to manage.

Once upstairs, he beelines to Ford’s room and the hearty collection of booze he’d found, and marveled at, cycles ago. It’s nice stuff, so hopefully it won’t taste like paint stripper, though he doubts he’d care much right now if it did. Grabbing the first one off the shelf, he downs a mouthful, then nearly coughs up a lung when it burns a hole through his throat on the way down. 

He checks the label. Scotch. He’s always hated scotch. 

He takes another swig.

* * *

The backseat of his car has never felt so comforting. Trailing his fingers over the familiar, worn-out fabric, he feels relief bubble up within him like a geyser and just barely manages to put a stop to the waterworks. There’s no time to waste mourning and no point if he can just make it to Ford’s and see with his own two eyes that Ford is okay, that’s he’s alive, that Stanley did not kill his brother.

In his haste, he forgets about Ford’s five deadbolts. His heart stutters in his chest when he attempts to open the door and it refuses to budge. 

“Ford, open up!” He bangs a hand frantically open-palmed against the front door, hears it echoing inside the cabin, and doesn’t even wait for the tell-tale sound of footsteps or movement before he’s banging again. There’s a great beast in his chest threatening to tear him open. Every second it takes for Ford to open the door it gains ground. 

“Ford!” His voice cracks in two. It’s not a clean break; it fractures into tiny, ill-fitting pieces like shattered glass. “Stanford!  _ Sixer _ !”

The door swings open. Ford’s weary face has never looked so good. It’s pale still, but flush and warm with life, and scrunched with something that hovers between uncertainty and irritation. “There’s no need to try to break my door down.” 

It’s so perfectly annoyingly Ford that Stan can’t stop himself from pulling him into a hug.

Ford gasps in surprise and tenses as Stan reels him in, then stands stiff and awkward within his embrace. It’s as warm as hugging a telephone pole, but it’s a telephone pole with a heartbeat, and that’s good enough for Stan right now. 

“Um,” Ford says, at a rare loss for words. 

Stan takes it as his cue to release him. The fear in his chest is settling, releasing his heart and lungs from its grasp and disappearing to wherever it lies in wait when not overtaking him; in its place a deep and chilling sense of shame washes over him. He opens his mouth to apologize, then swallows it back down. How do you even begin to apologize for this?

Silence falls between them. Ford shuffles awkwardly, avoiding Stan’s eyes. He removes his glasses and uses the end of his shirt to clean them. With the state of his shirt, Stan can’t imagine it will do him much good. 

“Am I correct in assuming I died?” Ford asks, far calmer than he should be, and the shame brewing in Stan’s belly grows. He waits for the accusation or the anger to come, and when it doesn’t, he finds himself lost. He deserves Ford’s anger. He deserves his accusation. Accident or not, time loop reset or not, Stan  _ killed his brother _ , and he deserves every ounce of guilt for it. 

He feels like the lowest piece of scum.

All he manages is a jerky nod.

Ford releases a deep breath. He keeps rubbing circles on his glasses. After a beat, he speaks again, and Stan’s stomach plummets with his words. “I suppose we’re even now, then.”

Didn’t Ford realize it was an accident? Couldn’t he understand that Stan would take it back if he could?

“Is that — is that what you think of me? That I was just waiting for the chance to get back at you? To  _ kill _ you?”

Ford raises a hand and tries to backtrack. “That’s not what I — ”

It’s not enough to stop Stan’s spiraling. He speaks over him, voice growing louder with each word. “You might not care if I die, but I don’t want  _ you _ dead!” 

Ford’s hands fumble on his glasses, nearly sending them to the floor before he catches them. He quickly places them back on his face and blinks owlishly at Stan. 

Stan runs a hand through his hair, catching on a tangle and tugging hard enough to hurt. He resists the urge to start pacing. This is hard;  _ words _ are hard. They always have been. He wants to move; he wants to do something. He wants to go toe-to-toe with a punching bag until he utterly exhausts himself and can no longer feel the buzzing underneath his skin. 

“I didn’t mean to — I didn’t want to — it was an  _ accident _ , not that you’ll believe me.” His words stumble and trip over each other, tangling together. He shoves his hands in his pockets, then takes them out again, at a loss for what to do with them. “I just get angry, and then I do stupid shit, and I mess up! I always mess up, but I didn’t mean to — I  _ never _ mean to hurt you.” 

He takes a breath to slow his words down and looks up at Ford. “You have to believe me, Ford,” he pleads. He’s used to being a mistake, but he can’t stand being thought a murderer. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

Ford stares.  Stan scours his face for a reaction, tries to check the shape of his frown, the wrinkles of his brow, the slope of his eyebrows for absolution or blame, but he can’t find either. Only something that looks an awful lot like shock.  Ford opens his mouth, hesitates, and closes it. He looks away, studying the far wall like it will provide him with an answer of how to proceed. 

When he finally speaks, he speaks so softly the silence of the room almost swallows it. “I do care if you die.”

Stan barks a laugh. “Yeah? I thought you wanted me out of your life.”

Ford bristles. He fixes Stan with an angry stare. “That doesn’t mean — I never wanted you to die!”

“Well it’s not like you ever tried to reach out until you needed something.” He hears Ford’s confession from the day before; it echoes in Stan’s head like an angry drum:  _ I did, I did, I did, I did.  _ “Admit it,” he snarls, “you were glad to be rid of me, weren’t you?!”

“Weren’t you?!” Ford cries.

Stan’s spent half of his life as a boxer. He should be able to dodge Ford’s hits by now, and yet somehow he always seems caught off-guard. “Glad to be pushed aside? Hardly!”

Ford shakes his head wildly, his carefully constructed composure lying in ruins at his feet. “Glad to be rid of  _ me _ !” 

The words hit the room like an avalanche.  They feel heavy and raw, wrenched free from some deep cavernous place that didn’t give them up easily. Ford stands heaving with the effort of releasing them. And Stan feels buried in their midst, unable to move —unable, even, to breathe. 

How could Ford think that?

“Why wouldn’t you have been?” Ford rips more raw words free and seems surprised when they tumble loose, horrified to reveal them. He straightens himself once more, tall and rigid, and locks his hands tightly behind his back. “You might not have meant to hurt me,” he argues, and his tone suggests he doubts even that, “but you certainly didn’t care that you did.”

How could Ford _think_ _that_?

“I thought I could rely on you,” he continues. “You were the only person who ever understood me —who ever  _ cared to _ . But as soon as I wanted something different than what you wanted, you ruined my chances to ever have it. And you didn’t even  _ care _ .”

His voice cracks on the last word, splintering at Stan’s feet, and Stan stares dumbly at it. He knows how to respond to anger, how to build up his own and wear it like armor, wield it like a weapon; he doesn’t know what to do with this.

Ford rubs a hand over his mouth roughly, then composes himself once more. When he speaks again, his voice is as cold and unbending as steel. “You were no better than the classmates who pretended to be my friend only to laugh at me behind my back.”

Stan manages to find his voice. “That's _ not true _ . Of course I cared about you!”

“Then why didn’t you come back?” The question rips itself free in a voice that sounds decades younger than they are, as if it belongs to the child that spent so many days tucked away in the Stan o’ War crying because the other kids hated him instead of the grown man standing before him. “I know why,” Ford continues before Stan can argue, his anger bleeding back in, soaking his words, “because you were glad to be free of your poor freak of a brother. You were probably happy to leave me behind and do what you wanted.”

It sounds like someone else’s words in Ford’s mouth.

It sounds like lies.

And worst of all, it sounds like Ford completely believes them.

“I didn’t leave you behind; I got kicked out!” Stan yells. He throws an arm out wildly with the words, too worked up to stand still any longer, and his hand catches the skeleton Ford has on display. It falls apart easily, unravelling piece by piece. The bones scatter against the floor, slowly at first, but building to a crescendo of clattering that fills the room. Stan watches a tibia roll all the way to the other side of the room, disappearing under an artifact-covered table. 

He waits for the clattering to fade out, then asks quietly in the silence left behind, “The hell was I supposed to do? Just come back to the house like Pa hadn’t thrown me out?”

“You called Ma,” Ford argues, playing it like a winning card even though Stan can’t understand why. “You never called me.”

“Would you have even wanted me to?” Stan asks weakly, thinking of every single bit of spare change he’d wasted just to hear Ford’s voice, and every single time he’d chickened out of saying anything.

He already knows the answer. It still hurts to see Ford hesitate. 

“Yeah, I thought so.” He rubs a hand over his face. Exhaustion settles deep into his bones. It feels heavy. “You’re so sure I didn’t care about you, but you made it pretty clear you didn’t even care what happened to me.” 

Ford frowns. He picks up the wayward rib bone at his feet and turns it over in his hands, studying it for breaks. “I’m sure you were just fine without me.”

“I wasn’t.” 

The confession breaks free before Stan can even muster up the energy to stop it. 

He thinks of being eighteen and nearly freezing to death in his car, losing so much feeling in his fingers and toes he was certain he was going to lose them come morning. He thinks of being a little older but no less naive, getting mixed up with the wrong sort of men when his own efforts to make it fell through, desperate enough to make millions to make bad deals, desperate enough to live to chew his way out of the trunk of a car. He prods at the missing space with his tongue where he’s still down one molar. 

He thinks of missing his brother so much he felt hollow from it and knowing, deep in his chest, that Ford was doing just fine without him —that Ford didn’t care about him at all. 

It’s not fair to throw Stan’s own fears back in his face.

“I was miserable, alright?” He wants to yell it, but he has no strength left for anger. “I was homeless and broke, and I nearly died like fifty times, and I kept waiting for you to reach out, for you to act like you gave  _ one shit _ about me, and you never did.” He kicks the bone at his feet and watches it bounce against the far wall, spinning off into the mess of the room and out of sight. “Message fucking received.” 

Only silence answers him, and Stan can feel himself losing the last bit of hope he still had that Ford would prove him wrong. He feels hollowed out, both minuscule and cavernous all at once, and more exhausted than he’s ever felt before. He backs up until he hits the wall behind him and lets his legs give out, sliding down against the wall until he collapses on the floor.

“I thought I killed you,” comes the whisper from above him, so quiet he nearly misses it, so hesitant it sounds fragile. Stan looks up. Ford is still staring at the bone in his hands. “After we went through the portal, I didn’t know what happened. I thought it was a trick. I thought you were —” He swallows the thought. “And then I—I.” He looks over at the crossbow by the door, and he doesn’t need to say more. Stan remembers the moment well enough.

“I didn’t know about the time loop yet.” Ford sounds miles away, his voice trembling with the effort to sound calm. He sinks down to the floor, mirroring Stan on the other side of the room. He pulls his knees up to his chest and crosses his arms over them like a shield, and the sight of it is so familiar that Stan has to look away.

“I stayed outside beside you for hours, and when I finally went inside, I didn’t even know what to do. I must have drifted off at some point, because when I looked outside again things had reset. But I didn’t know that at first. I just saw you were gone, and I thought—I thought something had taken you, and—” He takes a deep breath and swallows the tears filling his throat. 

Stan stares. He knows he’s gaping, but he can’t seem to make himself stop. He can’t process the words Ford is saying, or the emotion filling them, the furthest thing from indifference.

“I don’t know how to trust you,” Ford admits, and damn if that doesn’t still cut deep. “But I don’t want you to  _ die _ .”

Well. 

It’s something.

“Yeah, well, me neither,” Stan manages. He lets out a sigh, a rumbling sort from deep within him, his very soul protesting its weariness. “How did things get so messed up between us?”

Ford sinks lower within himself, until only his eyes are visible above his tightly crossed arms. “I don’t know.” And if he can’t figure it out, there’s no chance Stan can. 

“I suppose,” Stan adds, trying to muster up a bit of humor, though he's sure he falls short, “we could start by not killing each other again.”

Ford snorts. “A very high bar.”

Stan shrugs. It’s a start. It might even be the best they can manage.

They never used to seal their promises with pinkie swears as kids. 

Stan raises a hand tentatively into the open space between them. “High six?” he asks cautiously.

Ford doesn’t return it immediately, and Stan braces himself for the impact of rejection. He braces himself for the goodbye, the  _ please leave _ , the  _ I never want to see you again _ . He sees closing curtains in his memory. 

So what if Ford doesn’t want him dead? He certainly doesn’t want him around.

Ford raises his hand to mirror him. “High six,” he whispers.

Despite everything, it still feels like coming home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Interesting how many people were convinced that things were going to get even worse after last chapter, when I feel like after you both accidentally kill each other, it's basically the lowest you can get.
> 
> Also, as much as Ford probably hates it, emotions don't always (and usually don't) work logically. So while logically there was a reason why Stan left, I still emotionally it might still have felt like being left behind. Also, Ford's been viewing that moment and Stan through his own hurt and Bill's manipulations for like, years now.
> 
> Both of these boys are hurting and failing to communicate, but they're....getting somewhere?? Maybe??
> 
> Again, I really hope you all enjoyed this chapter because I really struggled with it. :/ Trying to get these two to actually communicate and not just yell at each other in a way that felt in character was HARD.


	7. Gnomes and Other Anomalies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, your comments are amazing and keep me motivated!! Thank you so much! :)
> 
> This fic has a moodboard now [here](https://bombshellsandbluebells.tumblr.com/post/640307759388213249/moodboard-for-d%C3%A9j%C3%A0-vu-gravity-falls-fic-its-a)
> 
> And a playlist [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2QdMU7vPDt2nR775t3DyMJ)
> 
> Because I couldn't be stopped.

Stan finds it easier to breathe after that. 

Things aren’t comfortable, but the tension between them no longer feels heavy enough to bury him under the floorboards, and he doesn’t fear a fight every second he and Ford are in the same room. For the first time since this mess started, it really seems like they might manage to coexist long enough to break the loop, possibly without another argument, though Stan isn’t counting his chickens just yet.

He spends a lot of time thinking about the things Ford said. 

It’s a relief, at least, to know his brother doesn’t want him dead. The pain in Ford’s voice when he’d talked about that first cycle had been authentic, and he’s never been a good enough liar to fake that. The only problem is that Stan still can’t imagine what Ford had thought he was shooting at, and he’d danced around the topic yet again.

If Ford is an addict, and Stan has yet to see anything that proves his theory wrong, then it's possible Ford had been hallucinating. Could Ford have truly thought he was shooting at some other threat, only to realize too late exactly what was going on?

It’s easier to swallow than the idea that Ford just hates him enough to kill him, especially after what Stan is internally referring to as The Talk, capital letters included. And besides that, it’s comforting to think his brother wouldn’t shoot him, so Stan finds himself, despite years of learning to stay cynical and guarded, stubbornly clinging to it. Ford doesn’t hate him. Maybe he doesn’t like him. Maybe he doesn’t want him around. But fuck, at least he doesn’t  _ hate _ him. Stan thinks he could live with that.

He spends a lot of time avoiding thinking about the things Ford said too. 

His mind runs wild without his say-so; every time it slips out of his control, he hears the echoing  _ glad to be rid of me _ and feels a tight hand squeezing his heart into a pulp. What had he  _ ever _ done to give Ford that idea? He shakes the thought off best he can and shoves it down deep where it can’t touch him. 

Overall, the routine they’d established before doesn’t change much. Ford still spends most of his time alone working on a solution, and Stan spends most of his time alone trying not to die of boredom. Snooping lost its luster cycles ago; he’s already memorized every odd and end in Ford’s house—and half-wondered if he’s been trying to start some kind of roadside freak show with all the weird junk he’s accumulated—marveled at every weird clue into his brother’s adult life, and worried at every red flag—and until Ford is ready to open up about whatever is going on with him, that mystery is going nowhere.

But Stan doesn’t do well without distractions. He needs something to keep his hands occupied and his body moving, which is how he finds himself tackling the mess that is Ford’s kitchen. He’s waist-deep in the fridge, scrubbing for all he’s worth, humming along to an old record player he’d found in the upstairs guest room—the healthy collection of bluegrass and country he’d found with it might not have been his first pick, but he can make do—when a sudden voice behind him asks, “What are you doing?”

Stan jerks so suddenly he slams his head against one of the fridge’s shelves. He pulls himself free, rubbing at his head, and turns to see Ford staring at him from the doorway. He has a pile of notes clutched in his hands, no doubt the reason he’d emerged from the basement in the first place.

Stan gestures at the kitchen around him. “Cleaning your kitchen. It’s disgusting.”

Ford surveys the room, nose wrinkling in disgust and what might be a slight bit of embarrassment. “I’ll admit it’s not in the best of shape.”

Understatement of the year. “There was a science experiment growing in your fridge, Poindexter.” He gestures towards the trash can where he’d tossed the offending mystery meat.

Ford follows his gaze. “It’s not a science experiment. I think it’s baloney.”

It’s stated so matter-of-factly that Stan can’t help but laugh. Ford tenses at the sound.

“Used to be, you mean,” Stan says, fighting to get his giggles under control. It really wasn’t that funny, but it feels so good to be able to enjoy time with his brother again, even for just a brief moment, that the laughter keeps bubbling up within him. 

Ford watches him for a moment, then, as if realizing that the laughter isn’t at his expense, relaxes. He shuffles awkwardly, rearranging the papers in his hands, then nods his head towards the record player on the countertop. “I didn’t know I owned a record player.”

Stan leans back against the counter behind him. “Yeah, found it in the bedroom upstairs.”

“Ah,” Ford says. He picks up one of the albums and studies the cover. “It must have been my assistant’s. He left a few things here when he, uh, resigned.”

Well, that certainly explained some of the items Stan had found around the house. “Yeah, didn’t think country was really your thing.” The grimace Ford gives him at the thought is so funny he has to force down another round of laughter. “That’s a pretty nice collection to just leave behind, though. He’s not planning to come back and get it?”

Ford gives another grimace, but this one is darker, lacking the humor of the first. “He said he never wanted to step foot in this house again.”

The kitchen feels instantly colder. Stan’s heart sinks into his stomach, lodging there like it’s quicksand. He remembers, quite suddenly, the blood-stained bathroom. Whose blood is covering Ford’s sink? Had his brother’s drug problem chased his assistant off, or had Ford’s paranoia gotten the best of him the same way it had Stan all those cycles ago? 

It’s a chilling thought. He wants to pretend he never even thought it, and return to a few minutes ago when things were actually starting to feel okay between them. Stan twists the dirty rag in his hands.

Ford shuffles through his papers again, rearranging and refolding. “There’s no point in cleaning the kitchen. It will just reset anyways,” he says finally, changing the subject.

Stan shrugs. It’s not like he didn’t already know this was pointless busy work. “Eh. It’s something to do.”

“Ah,” Ford says. “Well, I’ll leave you to it.”

Some part of Stan wants to ask him to stay and waste the time with him, but he knows it won’t go well. Talking about the kitchen is probably the best they can manage. No use pushing the boundaries.

* * *

Stan starts spending his time in town. Cleaning Ford’s house gets boring quickly, and the reminder of the bloody bathroom hangs over his head like a vengeful spectre. He lets Ford let him in each morning, makes an attempt to stay friendly, then leaves shortly after Ford disappears, the vow of Ford’s assistant dogging his steps the entire way. 

He wants to know what Ford’s not telling him, but he doesn’t dare ask.  So he wastes his time with Gravity Falls instead, scoping out the town where Ford decided to settle with no shortage of curiosity. It’s a nice enough place, even if the locals do prove to be kind of odd, but he has trouble seeing why Ford had picked here, of all places, to put down roots.

It’s too homey and neighborly for someone who doesn’t really like meeting people, and, from what he can tell, it doesn’t seem like Ford has even bothered to introduce himself to the other townspeople. When he tells people he’s Stanford Pines’s brother, he receives mostly confused faces in response, though occasionally he gets bombarded with excited questions about  _ what that weird scientist does up in his cabin all the time _ . So Ford has made  _ some _ impression on the town, at least.

For the hell of it, Stan makes up increasingly ridiculous answers in response. He tells Susan down at the diner that Ford is on the run from the government, hiding out in the woods of a small town to avoid capture, and the wannabe dancer with the unfortunate face that Ford is going full Dr. Frankenstein and attempting to raise the dead. It’s hilarious just how much bullshit he can get them all to believe. 

But Stan finds the most interesting feature of Gravity Falls on his way back to Ford’s one cycle. He’d spent more time around town than usual, and it’s growing dark by the time he makes it back to the cabin. Despite the cold, he’d walked, because driving his car through the icy roads up to Ford’s has already killed him at least once and he’d like to avoid another accident if at all possible, but he’s starting to regret it as the sun begins sinking beyond the horizon, stealing the last of its warmth with it.

He’s cursing the Oregon weather under his breath, desperately trying to rub some warmth back into his hands, when he feels the undeniable feeling of eyes on his back. His skin crawls. The hair on the back of his neck stands on end. The next shiver that racks his body doesn’t come from the cold.

Stan has learned over the last ten years to trust his instincts above all else, and his instincts are screaming that there is someone watching him.

He whips around, but all he finds are trees. In the darkening sunset sky, the narrow trunks crowd together like bodies, each one looking for a split second like the shape of someone in the distance. He scans the thin shadows quickly, searching for a face amongst the light bark, but finds none. What he does find are eyes—dozens of them, etched into the bark in natural patterns. But despite the eeriness of the eye-like patterns, he can find nothing out of place in the forest.

The feeling doesn’t leave. In fact, it grows stronger. Someone is staring at him.

_ He’s watching me _ , Ford’s note had said.

“Hey! Who’s out there?” he yells into the shadows, the knowledge that he can’t truly die making him brave—or foolish.

A few birds startle. The winter wind rustles the leaves. No one answers.

On the tree to his left, one of the eyes blinks. Stan whips his head to stare at it, his heart in his throat. On second look, it’s just an ordinary tree with an odd looking, but perfectly natural, pattern. He’s seeing things.

“Ford’s paranoia is getting to ya, Stan,” he mutters to himself, shaking his head, trying to force his heart back to a normal speed. His hands are shaking, and he doesn’t think he can fully blame the cold for it. 

He can’t quite shake the feeling off. The phantom eyes dissect him the entire way back to Ford’s cabin. Stan picks up his pace as he goes; by the time he escapes the trees and enters the clearing around Ford’s cabin, he’s practically running.

Just as he’s about to open the front door, there comes a loud, metallic clatter from around the back of the house. His frantic, panicked nerves kick into overdrive, sending his heart sprinting a mile a minute and his body into fight mode. Finding his trusty knuckledusters at home in his pockets, Stan slips them on and storms around the house to find Ford’s metal trash can tipped over on its side.

“Who’s there?!” he yells, searching for the culprit. The only footprints in the show are too small to be human. The logical answer is that it was just a woodland creature searching for an easy meal, but the feeling of eyes is too fresh to ignore. There is someone out there in the woods. “Get out here! I’m not messing around!”

He kicks the fallen can for good measure.

And nearly has a heart attack when a small man-like creature barely two feet tall and wearing a pointy red hat bursts out of it, sharp teeth bared. It looks like a garden gnome, if it were made of flesh and bone instead of ceramic and also looked about as friendly as a rabid raccoon.

“What the fuck?!” Stan scrambles backwards. His foot loses traction on the ice-covered porch, and he goes down hard, throwing a hand out for balance. He must fall too close to the thing—the man?—for it’s liking, because the next thing he knows, he feels several small but very sharp teeth clamp down around an outstretched finger.

Stan screams, shaking his hand until the thing unlatches and goes flying. Flabbergasted, he watches it pick itself up and run off into the forest on all fours. It’s wearing pants. 

Tiny, doll-sized pants.

* * *

“THERE WAS A TINY MAN!” Stan screams as soon as the elevator doors open, which, in retrospect, was probably not the best way to announce his presence.

Ford startles, then spins, clutching his pen like a dagger and looking determined enough to use it like one if he needs to. He relaxes slightly at the sight of his brother. “What?”

“A tiny man!” Stan yells again, gesturing wildly behind him. “There was a tiny man in your backyard!” He holds up his injured finger; it’s bleeding enough that his entire finger is stained red. “It  _ bit _ me!”

Ford eyes the finger. He relaxes, setting his pen down. What might be an amused look crosses his face. None of these are adequate responses for what Stan has just been through. Perhaps he’s not getting his point across well enough.

“There was a tiny man in your backyard. He was like this big”—he indicates the size with his hands”—and he had a beard and pants and a big—”

“Hat?” Ford asks, fighting a smile.

Stan frowns at him. This is not a laughing matter. Ford has weird men with a habit of biting in his backyard. He should be concerned about this. “Yeah, he had a hat. Don’t laugh at me. I’m being serious! I saw it! It bit me!” He holds up his finger again in case Ford missed it the first time around.

“I believe you,” Ford says, reaching into one of his coat pockets. He pulls, of all things, an ace bandage free and grabs a pair of scissors from his desk to cut off a small piece. He gestures for Stan to hold his bleeding finger out and quickly and efficiently bandages it. “What you saw was a gnome." 

“A gnome,” Stan repeats distractedly, even though what he really wants to ask is why Ford is carrying bandages on his person at all times and whether it has anything to do with the blood-stained bathroom. “Like. Like a garden gnome?”

“Essentially. I imagine real gnomes must have served as the inspiration for the lawn decorations. Though I can’t imagine why anyone would want  _ gnomes _ in their garden.” Ford says the word gnome like one might talk about an ant invasion, utterly unfazed but also incredibly annoyed. “They’re one of Gravity Falls’s resident anomalies. It’s the reason why I came here.”

Stan points at the portal behind him. “I thought that was why you came here.” 

Ford wilts. “No, that was—that was a mistake. But I came here to study anomalies. Gravity Falls has the highest concentration of them in the entire United States.”

“You came here to study gnomes?”

Ford shakes his head, exasperated. “Not just gnomes. All sorts of creatures that most people wouldn’t believe in, that modern science has failed to even find conclusive proof of. But I have!” He grabs his journal off his desk and moves to hand it to Stan before hesitating. 

Stan sighs. “I’m not going to burn it, I swear.”

Ford debates silently with himself for a brief moment, then hands it over. Stan takes it from him carefully, as if just grabbing it too hard might damage it. It’s filled with Ford’s articulate drawings and pages upon pages of his neat cursive, all detailing a number of odd creatures. The gnomes are just the tip of the iceberg, clearly; one drawing depicts what looks like an eyeball with bat wings, another an incredibly odd looking owl of some sort, and another a horrifying looking bear with a multitude of heads aptly titled the Multi-Bear.

Stan stops on a page. He holds the book up to Ford. “This says that unicorns are real,” he says in utter disbelief. 

Ford nods. “They are. They’re also incredibly infuriating creatures.” 

Stan stares at him. He’s not lying. Ford is obvious when he’s lying. “Are you trying to tell me that unicorns are real? And”—he flips a few pages and lands on one detailing some sort of one-eyed octopus creature—”this? This is real?”

“It’s called a cycloptopus,” Ford explains. He’s switched into lecturing mode, and his voice reflects it. “They’re mostly found in the Gravity Falls lake. According to the merpeople, they’re a delicious delicacy, but I’ve had to take their word for it.”

It’s too much. Unicorns? Merpeople? Portals to other dimensions? Ford had always had a fascination with the weird, with monsters and bigfoot sightings, with tales of alien abductions. He’d poured over grainy photos of UFOs, dissected tabloids filled with fake firsthand accounts, and had once forced Stan to stay overnight in a supposedly haunted house when they were teenagers to prove ghosts were real. Ford had left the next morning without proof and Stan with a crick in his neck from sleeping on the hard floor—and both of them had ended up grounded for sneaking out of the house.

Stan had never minded the obsession. It’d been fun. He’d poured over the grainy photos with Ford, speculating what the aliens inside the ship must look like and coming up with increasingly ridiculous descriptions. He’d egged Ford on with ghost stories and spooky urban legends. He’d even once worked one of the creatures into an issue of Lil’ Stanley. 

But he’d grown up and realized that, while fun, ghosts and monsters and aliens were about as real as the gold jewelry Filbrick sold in his shop or his mother’s psychic ability. 

“But,” Stan says slowly, looking down at the journal. The notes detail the cycloptopus’ natural habitat, their strengths and weaknesses, even their natural diet. They read like something out of a scientific journal, full of facts and firsthand observations, even if they do include a few corny puns. “None of this stuff is real.”

It’s the wrong thing to say. He thinks he knew it was the wrong thing to say before it left his mouth. Ford locks up tighter than a bank vault, sealing the excitement and joy that had been spilling out of him behind thick, heavy doors. “I’ve seen them,” he argues. “I’ve been studying them for six years. I know they’re real. Just because modern science has a blind spot when it comes to these creatures doesn’t mean they don’t exist.”

“I know, but—”

“I’m not lying,” Ford snaps.

“I didn’t think you were,” Stan tries, but Ford continues like he hadn’t heard him.

“And I’m  _ not _ crazy.”

Stan stops and looks more closely at his brother. Ford’s voice is shrill and overly defensive, as if he’s had this argument one too many times and is losing his patience for it. He’s coiled tight like a spring, all of the earlier easy-going amusement pushed aside and forgotten. And, underneath the thin layer of anger, Stan can see the fear peaking through, the worry that Stan won’t believe him.

Maybe he’s relearning how to read his brother after all.

“I don’t think you are,” Stan says slowly and carefully so Ford can hear him. To be perfectly honest, but only in his own thoughts, he’s not sure whether he believe what he’s saying, not without a better explanation of what’s going on with Ford other than hallucinations and imagined paranoia, but it’s obvious that tell that Ford needs to hear it, and he’s a far better liar than his brother is.

Ford lets out a deep breath. He uncoils. “Cryptozoology as a field is still looked down upon by most of the scientific community. It’s as if they forget that the geocentric universe theory and phrenology were once widely accepted as scientific fact until disproved, and that ignoring evidence and rejecting new theories out of nothing but pure bias is inherently unscientific!” His voice picks up speed with his anger. He points a finger at Stan. “Do you  _ know _ how many recorded accounts of merpeople or similar species we have?”

Stan isn’t quite sure he’s actually meant to answer. After a pause, he offers a hesitant, “No?”

“Hundreds!” Ford shouts, throwing his hands in the air. “Across cultures! Wouldn’t it be unscientific to simply dismiss those as the crazy imaginations of ancient cultures and refuse to look further into it? Or laugh at anyone willing to research the topic further? It’s like laughing at scientific progress! We might as well all keep using leeches to fight disease if we’re that unwilling to let go of preconceived notions!”

Clearly Stan has struck a nerve. “But Ma said you got a big grant to study what you wanted. So someone had to support your theories, right?”

Ford huffs. “To be perfectly honest, I was Backupsmore’s best student and my achievements made them look far better than they deserved. I don’t think they honestly cared what I studied, as long as they could promote me as one of their best alumni.”

“Pretty lucky for you then, I guess.”

Ford blinks. He thinks about it for a moment. Then, as if coming to the realization of something, he says slowly, “Yes, I suppose you’re right. It was rather lucky.” He gives Stan a look that he can’t read, intense enough to almost be uncomfortable. Stan shakes it off.

“I don’t think you’re crazy,” he says again, if only to preserve the peace between them. There’s already a lot of things Ford is angry with him for; he doesn’t need to add scientific insult to the list. “I’m just trying to wrap my head around it, is all.” 

“I don’t know why you’re struggling to believe in any of it. We saw the Jersey Devil when we were kids.”

Stan’s world grinds to a halt.

“That was real?!” he shouts. “Wait—like—the real Jersey Devil? From the stories and stuff? About the lady having the weird baby? I thought we caught a weird dog or something.”

Ford stares at him, flabbergasted. “A weird dog? The Jersey Devil looks nothing like a dog!”

Stan shrugs. “Yeah, I know, but we were kids. I figured we just exaggerated it or something.” They'd told the story to anyone who would listen to it for years after that, and each time it had gotten more dramatic in its retelling. Stan's pretty sure he'd told a version once where he'd had to save Ford from it's fang-lined jaws before it could fly away with him. 

Ford bristles, opening his mouth to not doubt tell Stan just how stupid it was to assume that, before something rather remarkable happens. He pauses, takes a breath, and forces himself to calm down. “I suppose that’s a rather logical assumption to make,” he manages tightly. “But inaccurate. And I’ve seen enough here in Gravity Falls to be certain that what we saw was real.”

“Alright, I believe you.” Ford smiles at him, and Stan knows it’s the right answer even if he’s still not sure it’s the truth. Although he did just get attacked by a tiny man with razor sharp teeth, so many he's willing to reevaluate some of his world views. “So we really saw the Jersey Devil when we were kids.” He takes a step back so he can lean comfortably against the wall behind him and lets out a laugh. “We could have died! Oh man, it could have eaten—”

He stops mid-sentence, his eyes catching on something on the side of one of the control panels that hadn’t been visible from his previous spot. It’s a strange symbol etched into the side, glowing a bright orange-red like liquid metal. It’s odd looking and out of place amongst the scientific machinery, and, for a moment, he wonders at the purpose of it, if it has to do with Ford’s obsession with mythical monsters, before a memory stumbles into the forefront of his mind. It’s hazy, distorted by pain and the number of crazy things that have happened to Stan since, but it’s there.

He’d almost forgotten it even happening, but that first time around, that first fatal fight, Ford had kicked him back into the control panel and it had  _ burned _ , hadn’t it? Could it have been that?

Absentmindedly, he raises a hand towards the shoulder he remembers burning. Ford follows his gaze. When it catches on the symbol, he pales. They hover in uncomfortable silence until Ford takes a deep breath and speaks.

“I didn’t mean to push you back into it.” He turns to face Stan, his face sincere. “Stanley. I’m sorry.”

It soothes a wound that Stan doesn’t even remember getting. He drops his hand. “I’d already forgotten about it,” he says easily, which isn’t even fully a lie. Ford doesn’t quite look reassured. Stan glances at the portal looming behind them. It still terrifies him, some primal fear deep in his gut warning him to run far, far away from it. He remembers how much more it terrified him to watch Ford drifting towards it. “I didn’t mean to push you into the portal, either. So I’m sorry, too.”

Ford nods. His smile is softer, more hesitant than before, but still there. “I suppose it’s a good thing we got a re-do then, despite the consequences.”

Stan snorts. “Yeah, I guess so.” He looks back down and the glowing symbol. “What’s that for, anyways?”

“It’s a protective sigil. It’s supposed to bind evil creatures and weaken them."

Stan looks down at the book in his hands. “Evil creatures like this stuff?”

Ford stares at it. He suddenly looks small, shoulders hunched in protectively, wrapped in his coat and dwarfed by the portal behind him. “Yes," he says slowly. "Some of the things in there.”

Evil creatures. Blood-stained bathrooms. An absent assistant that would rather leave his things behind than come back into this house. 

And a portal that looms above them both like a hungry beast, waiting to devour them again.

Stan suddenly wants to be anywhere else but in this house. 

Something awful has happened here. He can feel it in the air, the aftershocks of tragedy and trauma. Forgotten belongings dot the house like tombs, his brother’s notes like warning signs, and Stan gets the uncomfortable feeling that he has stumbled upon the wreckage of a disaster that might not have finished its destruction yet.

He sets Ford's book gingerly on the desk.

“Hey, I got an idea,” he says. “Let’s go into town. There’s gotta be at least one bar in this place, right?”

Ford shakes his head. “No. I should keep working on breaking the time loop.”

“You can take a break for a couple hours, Ford. Actually, you should. It’d be good for you." He raises a wagging finger and continues in sing-song, "All work and no play makes Ford a dull—”

“Do you want to break the loop or not?” Ford snaps, cutting him off. 

“Of course I do, but taking one more day isn’t gonna make much difference. Come on," he needles. "Just one night.”

“I’d rather not go into town." Ford doesn't look annoyed with the thought of distraction as much as he looks nervous. He wrings his hands in his lap. 

Stan sighs. This is just unhealthy. “You need to leave your house sometime.”

“Actually I don’t,” Ford argues. “I’m perfectly safe right here.  _ Fine _ , I mean. Perfectly fine.”

Stan studies him. He looks even more on edge now than he had when defending his chosen field. “It’ll be fine. And hey, if you make a fool of yourself, no one’s even going to know it! No consequences, right? The day’s just going to reset. We might as well take advantage of this whole loop situation while we can.”

Ford freezes. His eyes widen. “The loop,” he repeats.

“Yeah!” Stan exclaims in what he hopes in an encouraging manner. “It’s the best time to go out and meet people! No one’s ever gonna even remember you.”

“I won’t be able to fall asleep,” Ford says, continuing like he hadn’t even heard Stan. “And he—it’d be safe.”

“Uh, yeah,” Stan agrees, baffled but glad that Ford seems to be coming around to the idea. “Exactly. Totally safe. And we both deserve a break, I think.”

Ford grins. It’s not what you would call a happy or carefree grin, exactly. Perhaps determined might describe it better. It’s just shy of worrying. “It’d be completely safe. It’d be—he would have no way to—” He laughs, and it sounds somewhere between hysterical and overjoyed. “You’re right. We could do it.”

Before Stan can ask just who the hell Ford’s talking about, Ford leaps to his feet with all the fierce determination of someone about to march into battle. He laughs again, and the grin that stretches across his face has moved well past joyful and into something almost spiteful.

“Alright,” he says. “Let’s go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wkh wlph orrs fdq'w klgh brx iruhyhu. L fdq vhh brx iurp wkh wuhhv.
> 
> Ford wasn't supposed to go on a rant in defense of cryptozoology this chapter. He just kind of went for it, and he's right, so I let him have the floor.


	8. Drinking Games

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you so much for your comments! All of you seemed to have an idea of where this chapter was going, so I hope the actual direction doesn't disappoint at all. 
> 
> We're getting close to the final stretch of this fic! :)
> 
> I almost held onto this chapter for a while since I just updated, but I have no patience and couldn't resist.

Ford calms down slightly on the drive to town, although at some point he seems to trade his spiteful determination in for his previous paranoia. The further they get from the house, the more Ford’s hysterical giggling transforms back into frantic looks and twitchy fingers. His eyes trace the trees outside the Stanleymobile’s windows, searching the shadows. It’s a minor miracle they make it all the way to town without him demanding they return to the house.

It turns out that Gravity Falls does have a bar—a hole in the wall dive filled with bikers, cigarette smoke, and an atmosphere that Stan slips on as easily as a well-worn jacket. Ford, in his button-up shirt, tie, and elbow-patch trench coat, sticks out like a sore thumb. Luckily, he doesn’t seem to notice or care; he beelines to the bar the minute they enter and orders a scotch with the confidence of someone who knows their way around liquor and the desperation of someone who wants to be drunk within the hour. It’s a weird thing to observe about his brother—a detail so out of sync with the teenger he’d once known that Stan feels temporarily thrown off balance by the full weight of a decade apart. 

The bar is busy tonight, at least for such a small town as Gravity Falls. There’s a rowdy game of pool happening behind them, filling the space with the laughing and jeering of the players and the clacking of balls. Loud rock blares over the speakers, just staticky enough to make it nearly impossible to actually hear the lyrics. Stan has frequented enough dives to feel more at home here than he ever has in Ford’s eerie house, and he relaxes into his bar stool, letting the familiar sounds of drunk patrons wash over him. 

Beside him, Ford is doing the exact opposite, bunched up tight and defensive, flinching at every loud noise. His fingers tap out a frantic, impatient beat on the countertop as he waits for his drink, eyes flicking here and there, studying the people around him. He glances back towards the door every few seconds as if to make sure he still knows where it is.

Maybe getting him out of the house wasn’t the win Stan originally thought it was. 

The bartender drops their drinks in front of them. Stan raises his glass. “L’chaim.”

Ford mirrors the gesture despite the dubious look on his face. “What are we toasting to, exactly?”

Stan shrugs. “I don’t know. Finally getting you out of the house?”

“I’ve been out of my house without you before,” Ford argues, rolling his eyes. “I’ve lived here for six years.”

“Out of the house and into town, then. The woods don’t count.”

Ford doesn’t agree, but he also doesn’t refute Stan’s comment, which means Stan’s bet about Ford’s habits had been right on the money. 

It’s odd how heavy the silence between them can be in a crowded, noisy bar. No amount of loud rock or rowdy pool games can hide the fact that Stan is finally sitting with his brother without a fight brewing between them and has no idea what to say to him. It feels like trying to converse with a stranger after you’ve used up all the easy small talk.

They nurse their drinks silently—or Stan does, at least. Ford looks to be doing a bit more than nursing. With how empty his stomach is—because despite Stan’s best efforts, he can only ever manage to get Ford to eat a couple bites of anything, and sometimes not even that—it’s not going to take long before he’s experiencing the joys of alcohol poisoning first-hand. Although on the positive side, at least lowering Ford’s defenses might make him more willing to spill his secrets.

A lightbulb clicks on in Stan’s head: a brilliant kill-two-birds kind of idea. He waves the bartender over and orders six tequila shots.

“I’ve got an idea,” he suggests, and Ford raises his eyebrows in a silent question. “Let’s play a drinking game. You ask me a question, and I have to answer truthfully. If I don’t want to, I take a shot. Then I ask you a question, and the same goes for you.”

It’s the perfect solution to break the awkward silence between them _and_ give Stan an excuse to pry into the great big mystery surrounding his brother without seeming like he’s doing just that. 

“Why?” Ford asks, ever the kill-joy. 

“It’ll be fun!” Stan insists as the bartender sets the shot glasses down between them. “Besides, it’ll be a new experience for you.”

“I have played drinking games before,” Ford argues defensively.

Stan gapes at him, delighted. “Seriously? You? When?”

Ford sits up straighter, looking every inch the sort of person who thinks they’re above drinking games. “In college. Just because I don’t like going out doesn’t mean I never have before.”

“Yeah, but to play a drinking game you kind of need people to play with.” Ford glares at him, and Stan raises the hand not holding his drink in a show of surrender. “I just meant you don’t like socializing all that much. But that’s good. I’m glad you had friends.” He’s surprised to find the words come out sincerely, when once they might have been sour with bitterness. Stan had always been the one pushing Ford to talk to others, and he finds himself genuinely relieved to hear that without him, Ford didn’t spend ten years absolutely alone. The thought is too depressing to handle.

Ford’s face twists awkwardly. “I don’t know if I’d call them friends exactly. Acquaintances, perhaps, or classmates. Well, there was one. My assistant, but I’m afraid we had a falling out.”

“Over what?”

Ford takes a moment to consider his words. “He was there to help me with the portal. But we disagreed about the direction of the project, and it turned into an argument and—I’m not sure we’re still friends.”

He spins his glass slowly in his hands, staring down at it. It’s already nearly empty. Stan wants to ask more, but before he has a chance to pry further, Ford continues. “What about you?”

“What about me what?”

“Did you have any friends?”

Stan shrugs. He takes a sip of his drink. The truth is he made a lot of fair weather friends over the past decade, but he’s not sure any of them truly count. Most of them he was still on the outs with and praying he never ran into again. “I had a cellmate I got along pretty good with.”

“Pretty well.”

Stan swipes a hand through the air like he’s blocking an on-coming hit. “Uh-uh,” he says, shaking his head. “No correcting grammar during the drinking game. That’s one of the rules.” 

Ford frowns at him. “You didn’t specify that in the rules,” he argues petulantly.

“Well it’s one of the rules now, wise guy. I’m not drinking with someone who corrects my grammar.”

Ford mutters something into his scotch. It sounds suspiciously like _I wouldn’t have to correct it if you just spoke correctly,_ but Stan decides for the sake of keeping the peace to ignore it. 

Luckily, Ford lets it go. “Can I ask why you went to prison?” 

“Kind of the point of the game, isn’t it?” Stan takes a breath, considering what to say. The truth was he’d been twenty-two and half in love, naive enough to think that the first person to butter him up actually cared. But that seems a little too much to unload on Ford, not to mention completely embarrassing. “Trusted the wrong person,” he settles on finally, and sees Ford’s eyebrows raise out of the corner of his eye. “I was dumb enough to think someone actually cared about me when really I was just easy to use. Took the fall for him because I thought he’d do the same, but he skipped town before I even got released, and I never heard from him again.”

The stupidest thing is he’d done the same thing years later because he just couldn’t learn his lessons. All he’d ever gotten for his trouble with both Jimmy and Marilyn was a criminal record and a quickly annulled marriage. 

“You weren’t stupid for that.” Ford’s voice is uncharacteristically gentle. When Stan looks at him, he’s surprised to find he looks genuinely sad, the emotion carving deep wrinkles in his face. “It wasn’t your fault that he betrayed your trust.”

Stan blinks at him. He doesn’t know what to do with the sudden support, especially when it feels like Ford’s giving it to him unfairly. “Yeah, I guess,” he mutters, then quickly switches the subject. “Alright, I got a question. Why haven’t you been back home since graduation?” It’s been nibbling on him since he found out. 

Ford grows quiet and contemplative, staring morosely down at his drink. For a moment, Stan thinks he won’t answer. When he does, he speaks slowly, as if choosing the words carefully or gingerly skirting around an injury. “Pa always wanted to talk about money. Why I wasn’t making enough. Why I should have been giving them some of my grant money, even though I tried to explain that’s not how it works. Or how I should have gone into a field of science that would actually make me wealthy instead of running around finding monsters.”

Stan snorts. “Shows what he knows. You’ve _always_ just wanted to run around finding monsters. Always kind of figured we’d take the Stan o’ War to go find Nessie one day.”

When he looks back up at Ford, he sees that he’s abandoned his staring contest with his scotch and is instead staring at Stan, his eyebrows digging great furrows in his brow. Stan feels distinctly like one of those monsters Ford is running around studying. Then Ford blinks and shakes himself out of whatever thought had captured him and looks back down at the bar. “The Loch Ness monster is in a lake, not the ocean,” he corrects gently.

Stan shrugs. “Well, then some other ocean monster. The Kraken or something.” He nudges Ford’s arm. “That one’s a big squid, right?”

A tentative smile chases the somber look from Ford’s face. “Essentially.”

“Well, what about Ma?” Leaving their dad in the dust was something Stan could understand, but their mother and Sherman hadn’t deserved the same treatment. “You could have called her.”

Ford sighs, hunching lower over the bar, dangerously close to resting his chin atop it. “Ma always wanted to talk about you,” he explains quietly, words nearly lost to the music playing over the bar’s loudspeakers. “And that was equally difficult.”

“Oh.”

“Oh,” Ford repeats. He blows out a breath and watches it fog up his glass. “It’s just—I never knew what to say. I was still angry with you, and I kept waiting for you to be the one to reach out first, but you never did. And then Ma would call and ask when I was going to get over it. It was like she was taking your side. Sherman too. I received an earful from him a couple of times before I stopped calling. It was as if no one cared about what the science fair meant to _me_. Or that I was upset. As if I had no right to be.” He downs the rest of his glass and waves the bartender over for a refill.

Stan’s never been all that great at apologies. They’d never mattered much to their dad; if you fucked up, you fucked up, regardless of whether you were sorry or not. It was safer to deflect, to get defensive, to take a card out of their mother’s deck and lie your ass off. Sorry was a desperate last-ditch effort when all your other tricks were spent or a band-aid for the little things that didn’t matter much. Or a reflex when the other person paved the way, because the word came easier when you weren’t the first to say it. 

But he’d have to be deaf to miss how hurt Ford sounds. He wonders how he could have possibly missed it the first time around. Shame is an uncomfortable feeling; he takes another sip of whiskey to wash it down. 

“You did,” he offers. “You did have a right to be upset. That project mattered to you.” He takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have acted like it didn’t.”

Ford traces circles in the bar with his finger. “Why did you?” he asks softly, almost quietly enough to be lost under the noise.

Stan considers his words carefully. He tries to think back to that night, but it’s warped with time and ten years of hurt, until the only thing he can clearly remember is the image of Ford shutting the curtains and the front door slamming shut. He doesn’t even remember why he was at the school that night in the first place. “I guess I was afraid you’d be mad at me,” he admits. “And I guess I saw the project as the thing taking you away from me. I didn’t realize it mattered to you so much. I don’t know. It was stupid. I was stupid.”

Ford nods. He takes a sip of his drink. “Why didn’t you just get a job as a sailor? I thought that’s what you wanted.”

He sounds honestly confused and slightly annoyed by it, the way he always does when he can’t figure something out, as if he accepted Stan going sailing as an indisputable fact and was struggling to comprehend that it wasn’t.

And Stan feels just as confused and just as annoyed, because surely Ford was smart enough to know that sailing alone had never been what Stan wanted.

“It felt wrong to go without you.”

Ford stares at him. Stan watches the gears clicking behind his eyes until they seem to settle into place. “Oh. I see,” he says softly.

Stan eyes the tequila shots in front of him. Now might be a good time to abandon the rules of the game and drink one early. The idea of being drunk enough to not feel like a vulnerable, emotional idiot is pretty appealing right now.

“I suppose,” Ford starts slowly, “I shouldn’t have acted like that didn’t matter either.” He looks up at Stan, something vulnerable and desperate behind his eyes. “It really was an accident?”

Stan nods. “I was upset about you leaving me behind,” he admits, “but I didn’t mean to break something you cared about. I swear I didn’t.”

Something in Ford’s face cracks. He buries his face in his hand. When he speaks, his voice breaks. “I didn’t want you out of my life forever.”

Stan hadn’t realized how badly he needed to hear that until the words wash over him. The warm, calm feeling of relief settles within his chest and blooms, and he lets it fill him up, soothing the jagged edges and wounds inside him that still need soothing. For the first time in ten years it’s like he can breathe easily, the weight of his brother’s hatred dislodged from his lungs at last.

“I should have done something when you were kicked out,” Ford gasps. His fingers claw at his face, digging into the skin in a way that looks painful. “I should have—should have said something. I’m so sorry, Lee. I just keep ruining things because I’m so certain I’m right.”

The words are drenched with self-loathing, so familiar Stan swears he can feel them the same way he’s felt every bad thought aimed at himself, and he feels sick with them. 

“You couldn’t have done anything.” The minute the words are free, Stan knows they’re true. Ford had been a child just like he had been, both of them too young to even buy cigarettes, let alone stand up to a man like Filbrick Pines once he’d made his mind up. The only thing Ford might have changed would have been ending up on his ass on the sidewalk right next to Stan. “That wasn’t your fault.”

“I appreciate your attempt to absolve me of my sins,” Ford says morosely from beneath his hands, “but at some point I must reckon with the obvious pattern of arrogance and poor decision making in my life. I’m supposed to be a scientist, for Pete’s sake! And yet I always think I’m right and refuse to listen to reason.”

Apparently Ford is an emotional drunk.

He also doesn’t appear to be stopping this train of thought any time soon, and, while it’s good to hear that Ford has regrets, Stan doesn’t really want to hear him tearing himself down for the rest of the night. He steers them towards an easier topic. 

“What’s the craziest thing you did in college?”

Ford’s head pops free of his hands. He stares at Stan in confusion. His eyes are red-lined and shining in the lights. It makes the bags under them look even heavier. “What?”

“You heard me. What’s the craziest thing you did in college?” It takes Ford a second to remember the game they’re playing. When it clicks, he shoves his exposed emotions out of sight and reaches for a shot glass. Stan can’t fight the laugh bubbling up at the sight. “That bad?”

Ford hesitates before drinking. A blush blooms beneath his glasses. He sets the glass back down and stubbornly returns it to the line of glasses, crossing his arms over his chest defensively. “No, it’s not that bad. It’s just—well. It was an accident.”

Stan feels his smile growing. “Go on.”

Ford huffs. “I may have caused a minor explosion.” He glares at Stan when he bursts out laughing, head flying back with the force of his cackle. “A minor one!”

Stan wipes a tear from his eye. “A minor one, he says. Alright, genius, how do you cause a minor explosion?”

The questions flow easier after that, and Ford no longer seems to be on the verge of an emotional breakdown. Stan is forced to reveal the tattoo on his ribcage: a cursive M in a giant heart, a design as embarrassing for its unoriginality as it is for the occasion that had prompted it. He’d gotten it the night of his wedding with Marilyn at a shady tattoo parlor two doors down from the chapel they’d gotten married in, and when the wedding had been annulled it’d been too expensive to bother removing or changing it. 

In turn, Ford tells him of his first and only disastrous date in college, which he had apparently been under the impression was a friendly outing with a fellow classmate until she had tried to kiss him. He’d attempted to dodge so quickly he’d walked backwards into a trashcan, ending the night with a nasty bruise and the poor girl in tears.

Stan learns about Ford’s favorite courses in colleges, his general disdain for the school he’d attended, and one professor in particular he apparently had a vendetta with. And Stan reveals his unsuccessful Vegas marriage and his trip to Columbia, even if keeps the details of what he’d done there to himself. When he tells Ford the name and slogan of his first failed product, Ford almost chokes on his drink laughing, forcing Stan to order a glass of water to rescue him.

But gradually the shots get taken. Stan attempts to pry about the added locks on the front door, and Ford downs the shot before he can even finish his question. Stan takes two just trying to avoid explaining what he’s been up to since his business ventures fell through. After a while, they have to order more to keep the game going.

“Ok, ok,” Ford says, swaying slightly on his seat. Stan’s half afraid he’s going to go toppling right off it. His hand-eye coordination and muscle control have been shot to hell since at least two shots ago, and he nearly pokes Stan in the eye trying to point at him. “Why did you stop drawing?”

“What?” The bar looks kind of hazy around them, and Stan’s having a bit of trouble processing his brother’s question. He thinks he’s probably not doing so hot himself right now, though he’s certainly less drunk than his brother is. 

“Drawing,” Ford repeats, gesturing in the air between them like that will be enough to clarify. “You know. You used to draw all the time when we were kids. That—that comic. The—what was it.” His Jersey accent is thick on his slurred words.

“Lil’ Stanley.”

“Lil’ Stanley!” Ford throws his hands up triumphantly. Stan throws a hand out to steady him on the stool and tries not to take it personally when Ford flinches away from him, nearly falling off the other side before he corrects himself. “Tha’s the one.” 

Stan considers taking a shot; the answer seems too embarrassing—too honest. But it seems silly to waste a shot on a question so simple when there’s been so much worse in Stan’s life that he plans to take with him to the grave.

“You were better than me at it.”

Ford looks confused, and Stan can’t stop himself; he opens his mouth, and it pours out of him, aided by the tequila chipping away at his defenses. 

“You don’t know what it was like growing up with you, Ford.” He hopes it doesn’t sound like an accusation. He doesn’t mean for it to be. Maybe deep within him some part of him believes it is. “You were just so good at _everything_. You got so many trophies Pa had to start putting up new shelves. Everything I tried, you did better. And everyone knew you were going places, gonna do awesome things, and I just. I wasn’t. And everyone knew it. And I knew it.”

“I wasn’t better than you at everything,” Ford argues, face scrunching up as he thinks.

“You were even better at shipbuilding, and you didn’t even care about it!” And hadn’t that one stung later on, when Stan was left to work on their ship alone, stumbling without Ford to help guide him.

“Boxing,” Ford says triumphantly, pointing at him.

Stan shrugs. “Yeah, I guess. I wasn’t that great though.” He had been better than Ford at boxing, but he hadn’t been anything special. He lost more matches than he won, no matter how much practice he put in. He never won trophies or ribbons for boxing like Ford won them for spelling bees, science fairs, contests at the local library, and whatever else he’d applied himself to and excelled at. 

Stan hadn’t been the best at anything he’d tried.

He’d never held it against Ford, or had tried not to, at least, trying hard to play the role of supportive brother that Ford had apparently hated anyways. It hadn’t entirely been an act; he _had_ been proud of Ford, so proud he’d wanted the whole world to see how brilliant his nerdy twin brother was. But maybe he’d been a little bitter too. Maybe he’d wished he had failed more, been more average like Stan was.

“You were great at everything,” he says again, trying to beat back the familiar shame of being second-best.

“But,” Ford stutters. “But people _liked_ you.”

He looks utterly baffled by what Stan’s saying, and it’s not just the drink muddling his brain; it’s the face of someone who had already latched onto a hypothesis and built their own ideas around it and was completely thrown by new evidence.

“You didn’t even have to _try,_ they just did. But I tried. So much. _Constantly_ .” His voice cracks, shrill and sharp against Stan’s ears. “And nothing ever worked. No one ever _liked_ me.”

Stan opens and closes his mouth, at a loss for what to say. He doesn’t know what Ford’s talking about. Sure, some of their classmates had always teased Ford for his fingers and his interests, but Ford had always been the amazing one. Ford had been the one everyone said was going places, the one impressing people with his great big brain, the one everyone told Stan he should be more like.

But Ford keeps going, oblivious to Stan’s confusion. Something deep inside him is cracking, splintering into pieces, and, with it gone, those honest, buried words Stan had seen before start spilling free in waves. “Everyone hated me for my hands.” He clenches them into fists where they lay exposed on the countertop, hiding the offending fingers beneath his palms. “Or for my interests. I was too strange. Too weird. Too _different_. I didn’t know the right things to say. Or how to talk to people.” 

He gasps in a shuddering breath. “Even amongst the scien—scientif—” His tongue stumbles over the word, too drunk to handle Ford’s typical academic speech. “Science people. They were supposed to be like me!” He looks pleadingly at Stan, like he expects him to explain it to him. “To—to understand me. But they didn’t. They just said that my research was fake! Or—or the way I talked was embarrassing because—because I was just a poor kid from Jersey with weird hands. Because I wasn’t _normal_.”

The last word hangs heavy and menacing in the air.

Stan stares at his brother, who is trembling and gasping from the effort of speaking those words, and something finally clicks into place. It’s as if Ford is speaking in their silly made-up language once more, because suddenly Stan can understand him perfectly. 

Ford hadn’t cut away his roots and hidden his accent out of arrogance. He’d done it with the awful desperation of someone who had tried everything else and still failed, because Ford had wanted terribly to belong and had been turned away every time. 

Because he’d thought the one person who was supposed to always have his back hadn’t even understood the things he’d wanted and worked for—or worse, had understood but had still placed his own desires first.

And Stan gets it. He understands it intimately, because he’d done the exact same thing. He’d ended up with the wrong people and had done so many stupid things to win their friendship when the offer was never even on the table. He’d gone to jail for a guy who could only spare him a few nice words and nothing more.

Weren’t they a sad, pathetic pair of mirror images.

Stan lays a hand gently on Ford’s shoulder; predictably, he flinches away, startled at the contact. But then, as if realizing it’s just Stan, he sinks back into it, letting Stan rest his hand there. 

“At least people thought you were gonna do something amazing,” Stan offers, because he hadn’t even had that. “People just thought I was a useless idiot who wasn’t gonna amount to anything.” He laughs bitterly. “And I guess they were right.”

Ford shakes his head. “You would have been fine. You’re good at—at—” He trips over his words for a moment, swaying. His face scrunches up with frustration as he tries to put a point together in his fuzzy mind. “At people. And making the best of things.” He points at Stan. “You’re clever.”

Stan can’t remember anyone ever calling him clever before. Not even Ford. He feels light, like he could float up to the very ceiling with nothing but that one word. Even so, he doesn’t believe it.

He lets out a bitter laugh and shakes his head. “I was homeless. I went to prison three times. The closest thing I had to a friend was a guy I was stuck with for two years. People didn’t like me as much as you think, Sixer.”

“But—but you’re _normal_ ,” Ford argues, and Stan can hear how heavy the word is, Ford saying it with all the reverence of a miracle elixir, as if Stan wasn’t supposed to have any struggles in life just because he’d been born with the expected number of fingers. 

He laughs, then washes the sour taste down with another sip of whiskey. “ _Too_ normal,” he argues. “Everyone thought you were amazing. You were brilliant. And I had nothin’ going for me.” He takes a deep breath, staring down at his glass. He can’t look Ford in the face and let the next truth free. “All I had was you.”

Ford lets out a deep, resigned sigh. He finishes off whatever number scotch he’s on. Stan wonders how he’s still upright.

“It seems we were both jealous of each other over shtu—shu”—Ford stumbles over the word for a moment—” _stupid_ things.”

Somehow it’s a relief to hear it spoken so plainly. So clearly. It’s obvious in retrospect, with Ford laying it out on the table for them both to see. They’d been able to see the best in each other and only the worst in themselves, until somewhere along the line the resentment had twisted it, and they’d only seen the ugliest parts of each other and assumed it was the whole.

Stan lays his head down on the bar, his energy draining completely out of him until he’s too tired to even keep his head up any longer. He feels like an idiot. He feels immense relief. He doesn’t really know what he feels, all the opposite, conflicting emotions tangled up together inside him and duking it out like boxers in a ring.

He stares at the liquor bottles lining the shelves in front of him. The one directly in front of him has an intricate label full of curving lines that almost looks like an eye, and once he notices it, he can’t unsee it, just like the tree bark in the forest.

The alcohol is really starting to get to him. His head is spinning. “We’re stupid,” he manages.

Ford nods. He pokes absentmindedly at an empty shot glass, pushing it along the bar until it catches on a grove and tips, rolling out reach. “I missed you,” he says quietly.

Something ugly and rotting deep inside Stan crumbles and melts away, leaving him lighter than he’s felt in years. He turns his face into the bar to hide the fact that his eyes are brimming with tears. “Yeah,” he manages in a waterlogged voice. “Missed you too.”

Maybe this whole time loop nonsense was a blessing in disguise. Stan hasn’t had many of those in his life.

He must have said something out loud without realizing it, because Ford gasps dramatically, sitting up as straight as he can without toppling over. Stan raises his head to look at him.

“The time loop,” Ford says seriously, though the effect is lessened by how heavily slurred his words are, “is a _loop_ hole.” He giggles at his own terrible pun.

The entire bar spins around Stan as he lifts his head up. He tries to sit back up but all he can really manage to do is hunch over the bar. He’s completely lost track of what they’re talking about, but he nods along with Ford anyways.

“Because I can’t sleep,” Ford says victoriously. “No sleep, no deal! No deal, no—no—” He thinks about it for a moment, face scrunching up in concentration. “He can’t hurt me anymore.” He barks a laugh. “He can’t—can’t touch me anymore. I win!” 

Ford’s words knock some of the drunk fuzziness free of Stan’s thoughts. He stares at Ford, concentrating hard on what he’s saying. Uneasiness washes over him, and he wishes he were sober enough to fully understand, to be able to ask Ford to explain just what he means. His mind struggles to connect the dots, but one manages to come through clearly despite the haze.

Someone has been hurting his brother.

The blood in the bathroom. Ford carrying bandages in his pockets. Maybe his fear of leaving the house had been justified after all, and Stan had forced him out here anyways.

His stomach twists itself into knots, threatening to force every drop of alcohol back up. 

“Who?” he demands, but it’s too late. Ford has laid his head down on the bar and closed his eyes. Stan pokes him forcefully, but Ford doesn’t react, the amount of booze in his system finally taking its toll. 

Stan forces down his nausea. He sighs heavily, then downs the remaining two shots and lays his head down on the bar. He stares dully ahead of him, Ford’s words circling through his hazy thoughts. And then clenches his jaw so suddenly he nearly bites through his tongue.

The eye in the liquor label just winked at him.

Or blinked at him, maybe. It’s hard to tell when there’s only one eye. Can you even wink when you have one eye? Is every blink a wink?

Stan shakes his head to try to clear it, but it just sends everything spinning harder. He’s drunk. Drunk and seeing things, wound up by Ford’s fear and this town and what he’d just heard. It’s nothing to worry about, but what Ford admitted is, and the sooner he can get an explanation the better. 

He shuts his eyes and follows Ford into the next loop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> L pljkw qrw eh deoh wr froohfw rq rxu ghdo, Vlahu, exw grq'w jhw wrr frpib. Mxvw qhhg wr jhw vrph rwkhu prurq wr vdb bhv wr ph. 
> 
> -
> 
> To clarify since I've gotten lots of questions: Ford can't be possessed by Bill right now, even if Stan is still in the loop. My thought process is that Ford's soul/mind go into the next loop when he falls asleep and all that's left behind is essentially an empty body. Bill needs permission, otherwise he'd be possessing anyone or taking over dead bodies. So basically because of the terms of their deal (that he uses his body when Ford is asleep - which...is established in canon, right? And not just a fanon thing I've totally accepted as canon??) since Ford's mind/soul is never in a state of sleep because of the loop, Bill can't ever possess him. 
> 
> Lucky Stan.
> 
> \--
> 
> Also I wanted to share a few scenes that I really liked the idea of but ultimately had to cut for pacing last chapter:
> 
> \- Stan realizes he can call his dad and the loop would keep Filbrick from remembering the conversation. He tells him off, but he doesn't feel much better afterwards.  
> \- Stan wants to test the waters with Ford, so he grabs a random book from the bookshelf and goes to sit beside Ford and read. Ford notices he's reading "Around the World in 80 Days" and tells Stan he thinks he'll actually like that one. Mostly because I wanted to reinforce that Ford is absolutely a Jules Verne fan and also because I like the idea of Stan showing some interest in Ford's interests and Ford appreciating it. And I do think Stan would like that one since it's full of adventures.


	9. Adventure

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shout out to SaiyanQueenVega and microkarmaraptor on tumblr for both suggesting Ford shows Stan the hawktopus. :)
> 
> Thanks as always for all of your wonderful comments. They keep me going. :)

Someone has been hurting his brother. 

It’s the only thought that can clearly materialize in Stan’s mind the entire two hours it takes to get to Ford’s. Whenever a new one begins to form, the first thought fights it for dominance, knocking it out like a prize fighter. It turns his stomach, twisting his insides into knots tighter than a sailor’s and even harder to untie. He might not have a hangover, but he feels sick all the same.

How the hell could he have dismissed any of the signs he’d seen as things Ford had done to himself? Had he just not wanted to see the truth, vision too warped by anger and bitterness to see clearly?  He can’t even enjoy the peace the night before should have brought, because as good as it feels to know that Ford still cares about him —that he had honestly, truly missed him—the knowledge that some asshole has terrorized his brother to the point of isolation overshadows it completely.

Enough bullshit, he decides somewhere along the drive. Enough weird clues and red flags. Enough of Ford dodging the question. As soon as he gets to the cabin, he’s demanding an answer from his brother.  Stan wants to know who the hell this asshole is. And then he wants to shove his knuckledusters right into his face. 

Unfortunately, his carefully laid plan falls through the minute he actually arrives. Ford has finally changed his clothes, trading out his dirty button-up for a thickly-knit, blue and red sweater and his trench coat for a warmer winter coat of the same style, and, after hundreds of cycles without change, it’s shocking enough to throw Stan off. 

“I had an idea,” Ford says before he can even get a word in. The night before has clearly done him a lot of good; he looks more relaxed than Stan’s seen him since this all started, and his face is alight with an actual grin. He looks  _ happy _ . “I want to show you  _ my _ Gravity Falls.”

“Your Gravity Falls?” Stan echoes curiously, feeling sort of adrift with the unexpected cheer. 

“Well, you’ve seen the town now, but I wanted the opportunity to show you  _ my _ favorite things about Gravity Falls. The reasons why I live here.”

Stan considers going ahead and asking him what he’d wanted to ask anyways, but Ford’s excitement stops him. It’s nice to see Ford this carefree. It’s nice to feel like he can even share the feeling with him. Everything feels lighter between them today, so much of the anger and hurt shed the night before, and despite how badly he wants an answer, Stan doesn’t want to ruin this. He doesn’t want to lose this.

He’s wanted it for so long. 

What’s one more day, anyways? This guy doesn’t even show up during the loop, which means it’s a problem they can put off dealing with —at least until tomorrow.

“Okay, sure.”

The smile Ford gives him is blinding, and Stan knows he made the right choice. 

“Fantastic!” Ford eyes Stan’s clothing. “You should change into something warmer than that, though.”

Stan looks down at himself self-consciously. He picks at a mark on his sleeve, but it won’t go away, the stain worn deep into the ratty fabric. He hasn’t had much opportunity to feel embarrassed about his appearance around Ford, especially with his brother wearing clothes that were just as dirty and somehow smelling worse than the guy living out of his car, but now that Ford’s changed into something clean, Stan can’t help but feel ashamed that he still can’t. It’s silly; his brother already knows he’s homeless, but it feels awful to have the signs of it so out in the open.

“This is all I have.”

“Oh.” Ford considers that. “I’ll be right back.”

Stan shuffles awkwardly in the living room as Ford rushes off to his bedroom. He’s still a whirlwind of energy, but his movements are lacking the frenzy and panic of earlier cycles. After a moment, he returns with a bundle of winter clothing.

“I think these should fit,” he says, handing Stan a dark grey coat similar to the one he’s wearing and the ugliest wool sweater known to man. “We’re about the same size.”

Stan thinks that’s generous. They might be about the same size in the shoulder area — Ford has certainly bulked up since high school — but Ford is lacking the gut Stan has, and probably was even before he stopped eating. 

Stan takes the clothes. The sweater looks warm, but also like a pile of purple and orange yarn threw up on it. The coat looks exactly like what his nerdy trench coat wearing brother would find cool and exactly like something Stan would never in a million years willingly wear. He knows beggars can’t be choosers, but he does have _some_ standards.

“The coat isn’t really my style,” he says, handing it back.

“Oh, I wasn’t aware you had any. The mullet suggested otherwise,” Ford teases.

Stan snorts. “Oh, you want to talk about taste?” He gestures at the sweater he’s now wearing. It does fit, if he ignores how snug it feels around his stomach. 

Ford flushes. “It was a gift,” he mutters. “And if you won’t wear the coat, at least wear these.”

The knitted hat and mittens aren’t much better looking than the sweater. Stan gives them a look of disgust.

Ford flushes further. “Also a gift,” he mutters, pulling on his own custom-made gloves. He gestures for Stan to leave the house and follows him out, locking the door behind him with a ring of several keys.

Despite the ugliness of the clothes Stan’s wearing, he can’t deny that he does feel much warmer now than he had before. His thin coat doesn’t have much in the way of padding; it’s no match for the chilliness of Oregon in the winter. He might look like a craft store trash bin, but at least he can still feel all his fingers.

Ford leads the way into the forest, and Stan follows along behind him. He eyes the trees around them warily; the bark is still full of eyes, but in the daylight they don’t look nearly as frightening as they had the other night. It’s clear they’re nothing more than patterns in the bark, and he shakes off the lingering fear of being watched. Ford, at least, doesn’t seem concerned; he looks perfectly at home in the woods, expertly avoiding tree roots and fallen branches half-buried in the snow as he paves the way forward.

“I managed to find this buried in my pantry,” he says, pulling something free from his coat pocket and holding it out for Stan to see that it’s a dusty-looking can of beans. “So I figured that would be a great place to start. They’re easy to find and relatively harmless.”

“What are?” Stan asks, feeling like he’s missed a connection somewhere.

Ford glances back at him and seems to realize his mistake. “Oh, scampfires. They’re easy to lure out with a bit of food. Marshmallows would probably be better, but I’m afraid I don’t have any right now.”

Before Stan can ask what the hell a scampfire even is, Ford pulls out a pocket knife, makes quick work of the top of the can, and starts pouring out a trail of beans as they walk. When the can is empty, Ford comes to a halt.

“And now we wait,” he says cheerfully, setting the can down in the snow. 

Stan raises an eyebrow at him skeptically, before turning to watch the trail they’ve left. He imagines you can lure a lot of woodland creatures out with food, though he can’t imagine any that would be all that impressive. Still, the good mood flowing between them is nice, as warm and cozy as the new sweater Stan’s wearing, and despite his skepticism, Ford’s cheerfulness is infectious, so he dutifully waits for whatever it is Ford expects to appear.

They don’t have to wait long. After only a few minutes of easy silence, the gentle crunching of snow announces the arrival of something small. Amongst the trees, Stan can make out the warm, orange glow of a fire, low to the ground and growing steadily closer. As it steps out into the open, he’s amazed to find that it  _ is _ a fire —a little campfire moving across the ground like a living creature with a mind of its own. 

It walks along the line of beans, swallowing them up as it goes, though Stan can’t find a mouth anywhere on it. Instead, the fire just seems to absorb the food as it walks along it, letting out little crackling sounds that seem to sit somewhere between the popping of wood burning and the content purring of a cat. As it grows closer, he realizes that it’s not a moving campfire at all, merely a creature that looks remarkably like one. It has actual legs, several long spider-like legs that only resemble wood logs because of their color and pattern, although it has no discernable face and the top half of the creature looks like it actually is on fire.

As it nears their feet, seemingly unbothered by their presence in its pursuit of food, he reaches out a hand for the flames in dazed awe, but Ford grabs his arm and stops him before he can touch it.

“I wouldn’t do that,” he warns. “They will burn you just the same as any other fire would.”

“What the hell is it?” Stan asks as the thing before them lets out another crackling purr. He can feel the heat now on his legs.

“I told you. It’s a scampfire. My best guess is that it is some kind of arachnid. They seem to pose as campfires in an attempt to get free food, but they’re fairly harmless.” 

“But it’s—it’s actually on fire?” The scampfire is circling them now, searching for more food. Finding none, it descends on the can. A puff of dark smoke and the smell of burning metal floats up into the air. The thing is kind of cute, Stan decides.

“Not on fire,” Ford corrects. “It actually is fire. A form of  _ living _ fire. Remarkable, isn’t it?”

Stan nods dazedly, feeling like his entire world has been thrown off its axis, in desperate need of realignment. The gnomes had been one thing, but adding the scampfire into the mix makes the rest of Ford’s journal seem just a little less ridiculous. 

When he looks up, Ford is grinning at him. Weeks of stress and exhaustion seem to melt off his face with his smile; he looks younger and healthier, some of the life and joy that had been missing ever since Stan arrived poured back into him, lighting him up from the inside out. Stan can’t help but smile back at him. 

It feels, he suddenly realizes, like they’re on an adventure again, just the two of them exploring all the wonders the world has to offer. Only now, they’re not contained to the few and unremarkable wonders of Glass Shard Beach. It might not be the trip around the world Stan always dreamed of, but after a decade of loneliness, Stan is exploring the world with his brother again, and he feels like he could burst with the happiness of it.

Ford grabs his arm and gently tugs him away from the scampfire. “Let’s move on. There’s so much more I want to show you.”

* * *

Ford takes him to a cave and leads him deep into the inner caverns, pulling a flashlight free from his pocket to light their path. The obvious distaste he expresses for it almost makes Stan laugh. When Ford explains that he preferred to use old-fashioned lanterns but had nearly gotten trapped down here in the dark previously when his lantern had gone out, Stan does laugh, the sound echoing off the cavern walls.

His brother is a character, but Stan wouldn’t have him any other way. Of course Ford had been so committed to what he’d thought was cool that he’d gone for style over practicality; he’d done the exact same thing when they were younger and he’d gotten the quill and ink set he’d begged and begged for for his birthday. For nearly a year, all his homework was written in quill, and Stan suspected their teachers only put up with it because Ford was such a shining student. In fact, from the little Stan had seen of Ford’s journal, he’s willing to bet that quill has made a reapparance in Ford’s life. 

In the caverns, Ford shows him creatures he calls geodites, which are about as cute and ridiculous looking as the scampfire had been. They’re little balls of living rocks, which startle and scatter when Ford shines his light on them, rushing to hide themselves in the shadows of the cave. One runs over Stan’s foot in its attempt to flee, and he’s surprised at how heavy it feels, almost as heavy as an actual stone of the same size.

A squeaking noise comes from deeper in the cave. Before Stan can say anything, Ford hurries down into the darkness after it, and he's forced to either follow quickly or lose the only light.

“That sounded just like a —ah!” Ford exclaims triumphantly, turning his flashlight to illuminate the form of something large and furry hanging from the cavern ceiling above them. 

It looks even taller than they are, and neither of them are short men. Stan nearly swallows his tongue as one large golden eye peeks out from the mass of fur and webbed material to stare at them. It’s a bat, but not like any bat that Stan has ever seen. This one is massive, bigger than both of them. Its wings are wrapped securely around its body, but Stan  guesses that if they were spread out they’d just about touch both sides of the cavern opening they’ve found themselves in.

He takes a step away from it, trying not to move too quickly. Ford doesn’t seem nearly as worried, staying right where he is within reach of the thing, shining his flashlight directly on it.

“Oh, I wish I had some fruit with me,” he mutters.

“Fruit?” Stan hisses, watching the bat warily. The bat stares back at them, and Stan isn’t versed enough in animal body language to know if it’s planning to attack or not. He can’t imagine it’s too happy about Ford waking it up and shining a light in its face. “That thing looks more willing to eat people than apples, Sixer.”

“I thought that too,” Ford says calmly. “I originally thought it was a larger species of vampire bat and responsible for some of the livestock deaths in this area, although I’m beginning to suspect it's a chupacabra instead. These bats are actually a giant form of fruit bat.”

“It looks like it could eat us,” Stan hisses, backing up further. He swipes for Ford’s arm, trying to get a grip on his coat so he can yank him back into safety, but Ford steps out of his reach —closer to the giant bat.

“I assure you they’re quite harmless. I’ve never had a problem with them,” Ford says stubbornly.

Despite his assurances, however, the bat doesn’t seem very pleased with him getting closer. It lets out a series of angry squeaks, deeper than any bat Stan’s ever heard. They rumble and echo down the cave, and Ford freezes just steps away from it.

The bat shifts, as if about to unfurl, and Ford quickly steps back.

“Although perhaps we should leave anyways,” he says quickly, and the two of them hurry out of the cave, the sounds of the angry bat following them out.

Once outside in the sunshine, free of the cave, Stan laughs. “Giant, angry-looking bat and you wanted to feed it some fruit! It’s amazing you haven’t been eaten by a monster already.”

“I assure you they don’t eat people,” Ford argues, stowing his flashlight back in his pocket. “But I suppose it wasn’t too happy with us waking it up.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” Stan scoffs.

Ford frowns, mouth twisting as he wrestles with a thought. “I’d prefer if you didn’t call them monsters,” he says finally. “The word implies that there’s something monstrous about their existence. That they’re bad or something to be hated or feared simplify for being different and strange. I’d rather call them anomalies.”

Stan studies him. He looks uncomfortable, his eyes glancing anywhere but at Stan, his face wrinkled with a frown. It’s clear he isn’t just defending the scampfires and geodites, or anything else that might be hiding around the woods of Gravity Falls. In that moment, it becomes crystal clear to Stan just why his brother has chosen here of all places to settle—why Ford, after weathering rejection after rejection from any other community he had attempted to find belonging in, would build his home amongst the strange and unbelievable creatures of this town instead.

Why he doesn’t want to call those creatures monsters. Why he wants so badly to prove their existence to the outside world and have the chance to celebrate their otherness.

“Alright,” Stan agrees easily. “Anomalies.”

Ford relaxes. He smiles. “Thank you. Honestly, they’re all wonderful and beautiful in their own way. Even the gnomes.” He grimaces. “Except the hawktopus. I’ve never seen such a stupid creature.”

Stan bursts out laughing. “What’d the hawktopus do to you, huh?”

“It makes absolutely no sense!” Ford exclaims, throwing his hands wide to emphasize his point. “How would a hawk and an octopus interbreed in the first place? Is it meant to live in the water or the air, because it hasn’t evolved to be well suited for either environment! What is the point of tentacles in the air? Or wings in the water? Why has such a stupid species managed to survive?”

Stan laughs. “Oh man. I know what we need to do now.”

Ford stops mid-gesture. “What?”

“We need to find a hawktopus,” Stan says with a grin. “I gotta see this thing for myself.” 

Ford groans.

* * *

They do find a hawktopus, and Stan does get a kick out of how ridiculous it is. He gets winded from how hard he laughs, both at the anomaly itself and the look of obvious distaste and frustration on Ford’s face at the sight of it. When it takes off into the air, wobbling and unbalanced, tentacles writhing uselessly, Stan nearly falls over with the force of his laughter. 

“Okay,” he says, wiping a tear from his eye. “That was worth it. That was worth the whole trip out.”

Ford rolls his eyes, but he can’t quite manage to fight down the grin on his face. “I’m so glad you’re enjoying it.” He glances at his watch, then eyes the sky. “It’s getting late. I want to show you one last thing before it gets dark.”

Ford takes him to a lake. It’s larger than Stan would have expected, though it has nothing on the ocean. It’s surrounded by tall cliffs, the shapes of which are nearly lost to the cloudy fog hovering above the frozen water. Beneath the thick ice, Stan can see moving shapes, and he doesn’t know if they’re fish or the mermaids Ford mentioned before.

Beside him, Ford sighs heavily. It’s a peaceful sigh, the sound of someone completely at peace. “This is my favorite place in Gravity Falls.”

“Why?” Stan asks, although it’s easy to understand why. The entire clearing is quiet and peaceful. If it was a little warmer, Stan thinks he could sit off the dock fishing for hours here, just soaking up the feeling. 

Ford takes a seat in the snow and Stan follows him. “It reminds me of the beach,” Ford explains, speaking softly enough to avoid disturbing the peace.

So many of Stan’s wounds have already been soothed, but he feels something else long misplaced settle gently into place. He breathes out a sigh, studying the frozen lake. It’s nice to know he hadn’t been the only one who had missed home, who had longed for the beach of their childhood, glass shards and litter and all. 

“It’s nice,” he says, and Ford hums in agreement.

A face peeks out at them from beneath the ice. Stan jumps at the sight of it. It’s human-looking, but dotted with scales like freckles, and where there should be ears, there are long fins instead. The thing waves at Ford, and he waves back.

“A siren,” Ford explains. “Don’t be rude.”

Stan gives the siren a wave. It grins at him, exposing sharp teeth, then disappears down into the depths. Stan lets out an incredulous laugh.

They settle into silence, enjoying the peace and the feeling of easy company. It feels like a victory to have it at last, to be able to sit here and enjoy Ford’s company and not feel the need to say anything, to explain or argue or beg to be understood. Just to sit beside each other, in silence, in peace, and watch the lake.

The time loop no longer feels like the curse it once had. Without it, he never would have found this moment. Without it, he never would have regained his brother. For the first time, he finds himself grateful for it. He doesn’t care anymore whether they break it.

If this is what eternity has in store for him, day after day with his brother, relearning how to fit together with him once more, Stan thinks he could make his peace with it. 

“You know, you’re the only person I’d want to get stuck for eternity with.”

The words tumble out before his brain even has the time to process them, lulled into a state of vulnerable honesty by the peaceful calm around them, and Stan regrets them the minute they leave his mouth. Just because it’s true doesn’t mean he has to say them aloud. His face burns hot with a blush.

Ford turns to look at him. A grin stretches across his face, his face lighting up with the pure and incomparable delight of witnessing your brother saying something absolutely ridiculous. Stan knows the feeling well; he doesn’t like being on the other end of it. 

“That’s not —I didn’t mean for that to sound so shmaltzy,” he hurries to explain, but it’s no use. It’s already been said, shmaltz and all. 

Ford bursts out laughing. “You still watch those dumb, corny romance movies, don’t you?” he manages to ask between giggles.

Stan’s face burns hotter. “I don’t!” he argues. “I mean I never watched those! I’ve never seen one. You can’t prove it.”

Ford laughs harder, his entire body shaking with the force of it. When he gets himself under control, he wipes a tear from his eye. “I’m confused, though. Am I the dashing hero or the leading lady who must follow her heart in this scenario?”

“Oh, shut up,” Stan growls, hiding his face in his hand. 

“If I had forever to live,” Ford says, his voice pitched high in a terrible imitation of a romantic leading lady, “there’s no place I’d rather be than by your — oof!”

It turns out that shoving a handful of snow in his face is still an excellent way to shut him up.

Ford sputters while Stan cackles beside him. “Stanley!” he yelps, trying to wipe the snow free from his face. Clumps of it stick in his thick eyebrows, turning them prematurely white. “There is no reason to act so immature! We’re both adults; I think we’re both above shoving snow in each other’s faces.” The serious expression on his face slips enough for Stan to catch the devilish grin attempting to break free, and he has just a second to realize what Ford’s about to pull before his brother grabs the back of his sweater and shoves a massive clump of snow down it with a triumphant yell.

“Ford!” he screams, shoving himself away from him. He squirms, trying to get the snow free of his sweater. It’s absolutely freezing, slipping down his back in icy waves, and it doesn’t appear to be going anywhere fast. “You dirty cheat!”

“I can’t believe you still fall for that!” Ford says, laughing so hard he’s nearly wheezing.

Stan grabs another handful of snow and hits him dead in the face for a second time. Ford barely hesitates before throwing his own snowball in retaliation, though his aim is little off thanks to the snow clumped to his glasses. It doesn’t take long for it to become a fully waged war, both of them attacking with all the energy and ferocity of children. Stan laughs as he ducks behind a tree for cover, feeling like he’s eight years old again, with no other worries but where his brother’s next snow ball will hit, like the last twenty years have just melted off him and puddled at his feet.

Ford still can’t aim worth shit, his throws always going wide or falling short. It’s why he’d always resorted to deception and cheap tricks, but after the first dirty move, Stan makes sure to keep his distance, pelting Ford from afar. He’s never heard his brother swear so much, and he can’t stop laughing at the sound of it. When he manages to nail Ford with three snow balls in quick succession, his brother lets loose such a creatively crass insult that Stan nearly chokes on his laughter. It’s worse than the sailors down at the docks had been.

Their fight attracts the attention of a couple sirens, who watch with wonder from beneath the icy lake. Stan manages a quick wave before making a quick retreat behind another tree to avoid Ford, who has decided to abandon projectiles altogether and is running full sprint at Stan. He can’t imagine what the end goal is there —if Ford’s just planning to wrestle him straight into the ground— but he’d rather not find out. 

They don’t have the stamina they had as kids, though, and eventually both of them fall over into the snow, completely spent and out of breath. Stan stares up at the grey overcast sky above them, trying to catch his breath, which escapes up into the air as big puffs of white fog. Beside him, Ford stretches out his limbs as if he’s about to make a snow angel.

He sighs heavily. “I forgot about this,” he says softly.

“Forgot about what?” Stan asks through labored breaths.

“How much fun I always had with you.”

Stan turns his head to look at him. Ford is staring straight ahead and away from him, the skin of his forehead pinched slightly with a frown. His glasses are sitting askew on his face, but he hasn’t bothered to correct them. There’s still snow clumped in his eyebrows and hair, and Stan’s sure he looks the same. 

“I think I forced myself to forget,” Ford adds. “It made it easier. Because then I wouldn’t miss you as much.” 

Stan’s tried that one. It never really worked all that well for him.

“Did it work?” he can’t help but ask.

Ford sighs out a great big cloud of white. “Not really.”

Stan’s face is stinging with cold, half-frozen and nearly completely numb, but he can still feel the smile. He nudges Ford and forces himself to sit up. “Come on. Let’s get back before we freeze to death.”

“Why bother? It’d be less effort than going back to the house, and we’d just wake up again anyways,” Ford argues, but he forces himself to sit up anyways, brushing the snow off his coat best he can after he stands.

“Yeah, but the dying part isn’t fun."

Ford shrugs. “Depends on how it happens, I suppose. But I’d rather not die of hypothermia either. Or from anything else in these woods. It’s getting dark.”

“Why? What else is in these woods?” Stan asks curiously. He rubs his hands together, trying to bring some warmth back into them as they walk. The knitted yarn hadn’t held up well against a snowball fight. “Is Bigfoot out here?”

“I’m not sure. I’ve never actually been able to find proof.”

“Well, then I know what our next adventure needs to be.”

Ford grins. “Finding Bigfoot?”   


“Yeah! I mean we found the Jersey Devil when we were kids. Bigfoot doesn’t have a chance of hiding from us!”

“Not if we’re together,” Ford agrees, and Stan smiles at him so widely his frozen face hurts. 

He cups his hands around his mouth and shouts into the woods. “Watch out, Bigfoot! Your days are numbered!”

Ford laughs, incredulous. “Are we going to kill him?”

Stan hurries to add, “Your days of being unproven are numbered! We’re not gonna kill you!”

“Oh, very reassuring. I’m sure he’s dying to come out and meet us now,” Ford laughs.

They rib each other the entire walk back to Ford’s house, and they’re still laughing when they make it back inside, despite the fact that they’ve both begun shivering with cold. 

“We should start a fire,” Ford says, rubbing his arms in an attempt to warm up.

“Way ahead of ya, Poindexter,” Stan says, grabbing a couple logs from the pile of firewood.

He’s arranging them in the fireplace when there comes a sudden sound, unexpected and out of place, cutting through the warm, peaceful mood of the cabin: a series of knocks at the front door. 

It’s a rather innocuous sound, and in a normal situation, Stan might have thought nothing of it. But here and now, where the day repeats a set routine without change, where in all the loops they’ve lived before no one has ever come knocking on Ford’s front door, it’s eerie, frightening in its alienness.

The sudden change leaves Stan feeling displaced and not quite sure what to do. He and Ford exchange bewildered looks. 

“I’ve got it,” he says, jumping to his feet. He’s made it through the living room before Ford can even voice his objection.

The man on the other side of the door isn’t someone Stan recognizes. In fact, he hardly looks like he belongs to Gravity Falls at all. His clothing is far too nice, well-tailored and new and designer brand from the looks of it, and the watch that Stan can spot peeking out from one of his nice sleeves reeks of money. His hair is slicked back from his face with a thin layer of gel, tight enough to his scalp that it gives him an almost skull-like impression, though the thick mustache on his face offsets the look. 

Oddly enough, he’s not wearing a coat. And despite the stinging chill in the air, he looks completely unbothered by the cold.

“Mr. Northwest,” Ford mutters behind him, which Stan supposes confirms that the man is a local.

It’s not as reassuring as it should be. There’s something oddly alien about the man’s face, and it turns Stan’s stomach to look at it, as if some primal instinct has clued in to something before his brain has. The features of a human face are all right where they should be, and yet something feels misplaced, offset like a color print that’s just barely missed proper alignment.

“Heya, Stanley!” the man says, stepping forward, and Stan can’t seem to help himself from stepping backwards to maintain his distance. His voice is just as unnerving as his face. Stan swears he can hear two different tones as he speaks, like two different people talking in unison. The very sound of it sends Stan’s skin crawling. 

Behind him, Ford gasps, the sound punched out of him like he’s been hit, and the thing that Stan had been struggling to place suddenly snaps into perfect clarity in his mind.

The man’s eyes gleam yellow like a cat’s when the light hits them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yiddish:
> 
> Shmaltz - excessive sentimentality, especially in music or movies
> 
> \--
> 
> At long last, he's here. :) I was starting to worry I was dragging out his entrance too much, but there were some things I wanted the brothers to work through before he arrived, and that took some time.


	10. Bill Cipher

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you so much for your wonderful comments. I treasure every single one of them.
> 
> Also!! [microkarmaraptor](https://microkarmaraptor.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr drew some amazing fanart for this fic! [Check it out here!](https://microkarmaraptor.tumblr.com/post/641502488139382784/the-last-stanuary-prompt-was-future-and-this)
> 
> Warnings for this chapter: graphic depictions of violence, talk of suicide, mentions of an eating disorder
> 
> Quietly bumped the rating of this fic up to Mature for violence and heavy themes. Please heed the chapter warnings.

“Good to see you, Brainiac!”

The man with the yellow eyes speaks in a sort of singsong that sends Stan’s skin crawling. It’s a crude parody of innocence, made all the more unnerving for how obviously it misses the mark. So is the grin on his face, which stretches the wrinkled skin around his mouth so far that it looks painful to maintain. Despite that, it never wavers, staying firmly in place even as the man speaks.

“Gotta admit, it took me a while to figure out where you’d gone. A time loop! Pretty clever!” 

He claps his hands, limbs moving in quick jerks like an animatron or cheap puppet, as if he hasn’t fully mastered the art of moving them.

Behind Stan, Ford stands completely frozen, hands clenched into tight fists at his side and body locked tight with tension. His face has gone as white as the snow outside. He looks like he’s stopped breathing. 

Stan has no trouble drawing the obvious conclusion: this is the asshole terrorizing Ford. Only now that he’s actually face-to-face with him, he finds himself unable to make good on his promise, locked in place by the utter sense of _wrongness_ oozing off the man in waves. He looks human in all the ways that count, has all the right parts in all the right places, and yet, somehow, in whatever part of Stan that registers such things, he doesn’t _feel_ human.

“Not even gonna say hi to your old pal? Surely you didn’t replace me with this oaf.” The man gestures with an uncoordinated hand at Stan. “Thought you dropped this dead weight ages ago. Wasn’t he always holding you back?”

Ford finds his voice. “You can’t feed me your lies anymore, Cipher,” he croaks.

The man—Cipher—barks a laugh that sounds like metal screeching against metal. “Lies?” he echoes in amusement. “I pulled those thoughts right from your _head_ , Fordsie. I wasn’t the one who thought your brother was a useless, back-stabbing, untrustworthy idiot who was only going to drag you down with him.”

The fears are familiar, but somehow they lose their sting coming from this strange man’s mouth. Stan would have to be an idiot to miss that he’s picking his words to be cruel. He wants to hurt Stan; even worse, he wants to hurt Stan using Ford’s words.

“Who the hell are you?” he barks, squaring his shoulders. He slips his knuckledusters on.

The guy’s not that tall, at least a foot shorter than Stan and about half as wide, kind of thin and reedy, looking very much like a man who hasn’t done an hour of hard labor in his life. And yet somehow, he gives the impression of looming. When he turns his gaze fully on Stan, he feels like a bug trapped in a jar, powerless and suddenly aware of just how small he is compared to the outside world.

“You mean Sixer hasn’t talked about me?” Out of the corner of Stan’s eye, he sees Ford recoil at the nickname. “We’re friends. Partners.” His smile stretches impossibly wider. “We were working on a project together.”

“Not anymore,” Ford argues. He stands up straighter, trying to make himself taller. “And I’ve found a way to stop you. The loop keeps you from using our deal.”

“Just a minor setback, Sixer! I might not be able to touch you right now, but there’s plenty of idiots in this town. Just had to find the right moron willing to sell their soul in just a few hours. Lucky for me, this one here”—he gestures towards his own chest—“will do just about _anything_ for money.”

Stan should know better; his instincts are screaming at him to get as far away from Cipher as he possibly can, and if there’s anything Stanley Pines trusts, it’s his own instincts. But despite the warning sirens in his head, despite every run-in he’s ever had with dangerous men, he makes a rookie mistake: he lets himself get distracted.

Cipher lunges before Stan can react. One arm locks tight around his throat, reeling him in until he’s flush against the man’s body.

Ford makes an aborted move towards him, hand outstretched. He stops when Cipher brings a knife to Stan’s throat, close enough that he can feel the sting of cold metal against his skin. The knuckledusters sit on Stan’s hands, useless, forgotten. 

“So, what do you say, Sixer?” Cipher asks. “Let’s fire up that portal! I can solve this little time loop problem for you easily. My party isn’t bound by a dimension as dumb as _time_.”

Stan has no idea what Cipher’s talking about or how this man knows Ford—he doesn’t even fully understand what the portal is meant to do—but he’s been in enough similar situations to get the gist, and the knife isn’t all that subtle. Ford has something this guy wants, and Stan’s the perfect bargaining chip to make it happen—or so Cipher thinks. 

“Tough luck, pal,” Stan says with a vicious grin. “I’m not good collateral. You kill me, I just wake back up again.”

“That’s true,” Cipher agrees easily, in that annoying singsong of his. The grin hasn’t left his face. “But there’s a whole lot I can do to you before you die. Hey! That sounds like a fun experiment, right, Sixer? Just how much can the human body take before it gives out? Do you really need your ears? How about your eyes?”—the knife tip swings upwards, dangerously close to taking an eye out, and Stan tries to pull away from it but there’s nowhere for him to go—”You lot can probably live without your tongue, right? What do you think, Brainiac?” 

His voice drops, the singsong tone slipping just enough to reveal the fury underneath. “How many pieces of your brother am I going to have to rip off of him before you give me what I want?”

Ford shakes his head, at a loss for words. He makes eye contact with Stan, his eyes wide and pleading. There’s something in his face that Stan can’t quite read, can’t make sense of fully, until it dawns on him that Ford’s face looks the same as it did the day he shot him. 

It’s the look of Ford already mourning him. 

And he knows with absolute certainty that whatever this guy wants of Ford, and whatever he does to Stan to get it, his brother’s not going to play ball.

There’s no time to process that fully. No time to let it settle within him and figure out how he feels, betrayed or heartbroken or understanding. There’s no time because Cipher’s grip has loosened while he focuses on taunting Ford, and it’s all the give Stan needs.

“Thanks, but no thanks,” Stan says, then he grabs Cipher’s forearm and tugs, puppeteering him so that the knife he’s holding digs straight through Stan’s throat. 

* * *

Stan wastes no time catching his breath when he wakes up, just dives into the front seat and drives for all he’s worth. If Cipher showed up once during the loop, there’s no reason he can’t show up again, and Stan is a full two hours away from Ford’s. That’s enough time for any number of awful things to happen. He's well familiar with men who want things badly enough to hurt people for them, and his mind whirls with all of the awful possibilities, each one worse than the last, because Ford is _exactly_ the kind of stupidly stubborn to not give in—and even if he does, what then? Stan doesn’t know what Cipher wants, but it can’t be anything good. So it’s a lose-lose then, and Stan is far too far away.

He slams his foot down on the pedal and pushes the old girl as fast as she can go. It’s a miracle he makes it through the icy backroads up to Ford’s without crashing again, but he makes it in one piece, jerks the car into park so suddenly she shudders, and stumbles out into the snow.

Ford’s front door is hanging wide open.

All of the locks and deadbolts his brother had so carefully set and reset rendered completely useless.

Stan’s heart plummets to his feet. He feels like he’s at the top of a very long fall, with no parachute to catch him. The Earth is rushing up to meet him fast.

“FORD!” he screams, sprinting to the door. He nearly slips on a patch of ice hidden under the snow, but catches himself against the porch railing, uses it to vault himself forwards, through the door, into the house, and—

Something catches him in the side. 

Pain erupts through his chest. A crack that Stan has enough of a clear mind left to hope didn’t come from him rings out, loud against his ears. 

He falls, hitting the ground hard, the pain in his side exploding with the force of it. He can’t breathe, gasping on air but coming up empty because his lungs refuse to work, still shuddering with the aftershocks of whatever hit him, and he feels like a fish laid out on the beach, withering, writhing, gasping. There comes an awful ear-splitting screeching, like nails dragging across chalkboard, like speaker feedback, and it takes Stan a long, disoriented moment to realize it's laughter.

Cipher’s awful, grinning face swims into view. He’s holding a golf driver, twirling it absentmindedly at his side as he looms above Stan. 

“I think I broke a rib!” he says cheerfully. He raises the driver high. “Fifty points if I can break another!”

The blow comes down hard on Stan’s injured side, and he can’t bite down the scream of pain. His entire torso is on fire. Every breath hurts. Distantly, he thinks he hears Cipher cackling, but the world around him is hazy and indistinct, nothing quite as real and tangible as the pain is. 

He turns his head weakly, trying to get his bearings while Cipher is distracted by his own glee, and manages to catch sight of Ford a few feet away. His brother is tied to a chair dragged in from the kitchen, his own tie looped around his mouth in a makeshift gag. There’s a fresh bruise blooming above his left eye, crusted with dried blood, and his glasses are nowhere to be seen. He strains against the ropes, sawing his arms back and forth across the back of the chair in an attempt to break free, and his eyes dance frantically from Stan on the ground to Cipher above him, ablaze with an all-consuming, searing hatred.

“Well, this has been fun,” Cipher says, catching his breath, “but I have a party to start that’s one trillion years overdue.” He walks over to Ford and crouches to look him in the eye. “What do you say, Sixer? You’ll be my guest of honor, of course. I couldn’t have done it without you.”

He pulls the tie free from Ford’s mouth.

Ford hardly waits long enough for it to be removed. “Never!” he shouts. “I’ll never help you start the portal, Bill!”

Cipher blows a raspberry in his face. 

“You’re no fun,” he huffs, standing back up. “Luckily, I don’t need you anymore. Got my own two hands right here.” He waves them as if to prove his point, wiggling the fingers for good measure. “Just gotta figure out where you’ve hidden that basement door.” 

Cipher glances around the room, and Stan feels his heart stutter as his eyes land on the bookshelf. He moves to push himself off the ground, to stand up and fight, to knock Cipher out, to do _something_ of use, but he can hardly move. Every single shift is another stab of pain, and he falls the pathetic meager inch he’d managed, gasping and spent.

Cipher’s grin grows. Stan watches the realization spark slowly and tragically in his brother’s eyes.

“Let me guess, it’s behind the bookcase?”

Ford doesn’t speak. The look of horror in his eyes gives him away anyways.

Cipher laughs. “Man! What a cliche! I thought you were smarter than that.” 

He walks back to Stan and stares down at him, and Stan can do nothing but breathe and hurt and brace himself for whatever’s coming next.

“First things first,” Cipher says, twirling the driver. Stan watches it spin lazily through the air. “No offense, Stanley, but I can’t have you getting in my way. I know you have a habit of breaking your brother’s inventions.”

He gives the driver one last lazy twirl, then grabs it tightly in both hands, and raises it high in the air. The light glints off it as it reaches its highest point. Stan sucks in an aching, labored breath. He braces himself.

A shape slams into Cipher’s side. 

The driver drops from his hands, clattering against the wood floor. Cipher and the shape follow after it, slamming against the ground in a knot of limbs. A stray foot smacks against Stan’s chest, and he wheezes, mind dissolving temporarily into white noise. 

When he comes back to his senses, Ford is on top of Cipher, struggling to hold him down, face contorted with rage. Cipher squirms underneath him, trying to kick him off. A knee gets Ford in the chest, and he gasps, grasp weakening, and Cipher takes advantage of it, pushing Ford off of him to struggle to his knees. 

Ford falls backwards, throwing out a hand behind him to catch his fall. It lands on the forgotten driver. It tightens around it. Without taking even a second to pause and right himself, Ford swings it wide, hitting Cipher in the face.

His nose caves in with a loud crack. He stumbles. 

Ford gets to his feet and swings again blindly, clearly going for force over accuracy without his glasses. He gets lucky, catching Cipher in the head for a second time.

The man goes down like a rock. The force of his fall sends ripples through the floorboards, rattling Stan’s broken ribs. He bites down a scream, but it escapes as a long, airless moan.

Ford stands heaving above Cipher, the driver still clutched tightly in his white-knuckled hands. The skin around his left eye is red and freshly tender. It’ll likely start swelling soon. He surveys the body laid out on the floor below him, then shoves it roughly in the side with his foot. Cipher doesn’t react. 

The disgust on Ford’s face turns to anger. A scream rips free from him, so raw, so aching, filled with so much feral fury that Stan can’t fight the flinch at the sound of it. It echoes through the house and back at them as Ford raises the driver high and brings it down on Cipher’s still body for a third time. Blood splatters. It dots Ford’s face like freckles. Stan turns his head away, stomach churning.

He focuses his eyes on the fallen kitchen chair. Torn bits of rope lay scattered on top. He keeps his gaze there even as he hears uneven, stumbling footsteps coming closer, doesn’t even turn to check that it’s Ford until he falls to his knees in front of him, the fight visibly draining out of him. 

He reaches out a hand for Stan and then hesitates, eyeing his chest warily. “Stanley,” he croaks, his voice as much of a wreck as the rest of him. The scream must have damaged his throat. “Are you alright?”

Stan tries not to look at the blood drops. He tries not to let the sound of Ford’s fury echo in his ears.

“Don’t think he was kidding about the broken ribs,” he manages to say. 

Ford’s face shatters. “I’m sorry. Lee, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to drag you into this. I thought he couldn’t reach us here—that the loop would hide us, but—that was stupid. So, so _stupid_.” He drags a hand across his face. It smears the freckles into streaks. 

“Ford,” Stan rasps. “What the fuck is going on? No bullshit this time.”

Ford lets out a shaky breath. “I fucked up,” he says, and it’s the simpleness of the statement that makes it so unnerving. Gone are Ford’s scholarly words, gone is the flowery, scientific tone, the truth laid bare without ornamentation, stark and unsightly. 

Stan takes a moment to breathe. It’s getting harder to do so. “Destroyed Sherm’s radio for parts fucked up or—or science fair fucked up?”

The laugh that spills out of Ford is acidic. “Worse than both, I’m afraid. I nearly destroyed the entire world.”

“I said no bullshit,” Stan snaps, forceful enough that he feels winded. “So you got involved with a shady asshole. Happens. You didn’t nearly end the—”

Ford shakes his head before Stan can even finish his sentence. “I did,” he rasps. “Stanley, _I did_.”

Stan stares at him. Whether Ford’s right or not, he believes it. Guilt makes the shadows of his face darker, paints his expression in ghastly hues. 

“How?”

Ford is silent for long enough that Stan worries he won’t get an answer. He shifts so that he’s sitting cross-legged, lacing and unlacing his hands where they lay in his lap, twisting the fingers roughly enough that it looks more like a punishment than a nervous gesture. Finally, he takes a deep breath and speaks.

“Two years ago, I hit a stumbling block in my research. I was no closer to discovering the source of the anomalies here or why so many seemed attracted to this place than I was when I started.” He sighs heavily and looks towards the floor, avoiding Stan’s eyes. “I found a cave, filled with drawings and messages from the original people of the area. They spoke of an ancient, all-knowing being and a spell to summon him. There was a warning not to speak it aloud.”

It has bad idea written all over it. 

“You didn’t,” Stan says helplessly.

“I did,” Ford says bitterly. He twists his fingers harder. “And that night he appeared in my dreams. He called himself a muse and told me that he chose one brilliant mind a century to share his knowledge with, and”—he smiles, but it looks rotten—“that he had chosen _me_.”

Of course the one brilliant mind in that century just happened to be the very one that had summoned him in the first place. The con is obvious. He can’t believe Ford hadn’t seen it for what it was.

“I thought he was my friend,” Ford admits softly and somehow it’s worse than anything else he’s said because Stan can hear the aching in it. “I thought he was the only one who had ever really understood me—that he saw something in me. I tried so hard for his approval, and the entire time he was just _using me_ , laughing at me behind my back for my foolishness.” He laughs that acidic laugh again; it’s a wonder it doesn’t burn his throat. “I would have doomed the entire world just to hear his praise.”

Ford had never been good at spotting liars who offered friendship out of cruelty. It had caused more than one fight between them when they were younger—Ford accusing him of trying to control who he made friends with when Stan had just been trying to protect him. It looks like it’s not a weakness Ford had grown out of. 

“What is he?” Stan asks, because he knows the answer can’t be human. Not with those eyes. Not with that grin.

“A demon.” Ford catches Stan’s shocked look. “Or at least that’s the best word I have to describe him. He’s not from this dimension, but he can control dreams and possess people foolish enough to give him the permission to do so. And he’s vile. The word seemed fitting.”

This is so beyond Stan’s pay grade it's laughable. He knows how to solve problems with fists and cheap tricks but neither of those are a match for the thing haunting his brother, and Stan feels useless and weak, wheezing on the floor with at least two broken ribs while Ford piles more and more heavy weights on top of him.

“What’s he want?” he asks, dreading the answer but desperate to know.

“To destroy our universe,” Ford says, far too simply for an answer so awful.

Stan sucks in a deep breath, then wheezes as the pain flares. “How?”

“The portal. He instructed me on how to build it. I believed that he was helping with me my research and that accessing other dimensions would provide me with the answers I wanted, but he was just using me for what he wanted. Creating an interdimensional portal at the heart of a weak point between dimensions like the one Gravity Falls naturally has will tear a rift into the very fabric of space and time. Bill plans to use that rift to physically enter our dimension. And then nothing could stop him. Once he has a physical form, all hope is lost.” His voice drops to a whisper. “He’ll destroy everything.”

Stan doesn’t feel better for knowing. 

He knew something awful had happened in this house. He had seen all the signs, felt the weight lingering in the air. And still he doesn’t quite feel prepared to handle the truth of it. 

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me?” he asks. “You didn’t trust me, did you?”

It stings. It doesn’t matter how estranged they had been when Stan arrived or how much logic tries to argue for Ford’s wariness, it still stings.

Ford says nothing. Stan watches his mouth twist as he wrestles internally with what to say.

The words start tumbling out without Stan’s say-so, gaining traction, his ribs burning with the effort of speaking, but the sting of his brother not trusting him burning even more. “I get when I showed up. It’d been ten years. You didn’t know me. But why didn’t you tell me _after_ ? After we talked. I thought we were”—he hesitates, trying to swallow the lump in his throat so he can speak around it—”I thought we were _fixing_ _things_. You still don’t trust me?”

“I do,” Ford says weakly. “I want to,” he amends. One hand tugs at a loose thread in one of his socks.

They sit in uneasy silence. Stan tries to focus on breathing, struggling to process everything Ford's told him. Meanwhile, Ford keeps pulling at the thread. If he keeps going, the entire thing will fall apart.

After a while, Ford speaks again. “I didn’t tell you because I was _ashamed_. I fell for his lies. For his easy flattery. I helped him build the thing that will destroy everyone and everything because I was arrogant enough to think I knew better. I didn’t even listen to Fiddleford when he told me not to trust Bill. I just turned my back on him and destroyed our friendship because I wanted to be the person that changed the world. I wanted to be the person Bill promised me I was.”

He buries his face in his hands, and the next sentence spills out of him as a sob, “I wanted it _so badly_.” He crumples, folding in on himself. His fingers dig into his face, the nails biting into the skin and leaving pale crescent moons behind. With the bruises on his face, it must hurt, but he doesn’t seem to notice. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to know _what I did._ I didn’t want anyone to.”

It’s uncomfortable seeing Ford like this, riddled with remorse and self-loathing. In his weaker moments over the years, Stan had sometimes wished for this; he’d imagined Ford begging forgiveness at his feet, filled with guilt over his mistakes. He doesn’t feel triumphant seeing it now; he just feels sick. He wants to scrub away every single one of those thoughts, and Ford’s self-loathing alongside it.

He forces a laugh. It does nothing to help the mood. “So you trusted the wrong guy. So what. I’ve done that loads of times.”

Ford pulls his hands free from his face to fix him with a look of disbelief. Tear streaks line his face, drawing lines through the blood stains. His right eye has begun to swell. “It’s not the same."

If Stan could move, he’d shrug. “Sure it is. I told you about the guy I went to prison for. I’ve definitely done some stupid shit over the years.” 

True, he’s never nearly ended the world, and the people Stan had been stupid enough to trust had just been your typical human criminal low-lifes, but if it will get Ford to stop crying, he can spin a bit of yarn. 

“Stanley, that’s not—”

“Some illegal shit, too. Lots of illegal shit actually. Trust me, I got lots to be ashamed of too—”

“I sold myself to him!” Ford shouts over him. 

Stan stares at him in shock.

It looks like it physically pains Ford to explain. “I told you he can’t affect this dimension without—without a willing human host. I—I made a deal with him.”

“ _Ford_ ,” Stan says helplessly.

“He told me that my human needs were limiting what I could accomplish," Ford continues. "It was taking too long to finish the portal because I had to sleep. So he offered to continue the work while I was sleeping. If I just gave him access to my body.”

Of course Cipher had spun it as a good thing—as a productive thing, even. Of course Ford had fallen for it hook, line, and sinker, desperate to succeed, desperate to prove himself. 

Desperate enough for affection he’d signed his own freedom over.

It’s like the funhouse mirror version of what Stan had done for Jimmy, distorted and so, so much worse.

He feels sick.

“You said the time loop is a loophole,” he says weakly.

Ford nods. He’s avoiding Stan’s eyes again, staring down at his hands again, studying the wrinkles of his palms like they’ll unlock the secret to fixing this. “Our deal was only for when I’m asleep, but I can’t fall asleep because of the loop, and therefore Bill can’t take control of me. For the first time in months, I’ve been completely free of him. So I let me guard down.” He smiles ruefully. “I got foolish. And he showed up again to remind me that I’ll never truly be free of him.”

Guilt washes over Stan. “But if the loop kept him from possessing you, why were you trying to break it?”

Ford doesn’t answer. With one quick tug, he snaps the loose thread in two. A look of the same guilt Stan feels falls over his face, and the truth dawns on Stan without Ford even speaking it.

“You haven’t been trying to break it,” Stan says. It’s not a question.

Ford opens his mouth but only a weak sound escapes. He closes it again. His hands twist the broken thread into knots. He takes a deep breath and confesses, “I haven’t been working as hard to find a solution as I would normally.”

This wasn’t just Ford keeping things from him. His brother had lied directly to his face, repeatedly, for weeks or months or years or however long they’ve been stuck in the loop, letting him believe that he was working on a solution, letting him cling to the hope that he’d have a future again soon. 

It seems ages ago that he made his peace with the loop; the knowledge that Ford had never really been working on a solution brings all the grief and frustration bubbling right back up to the surface. He wants to be mad, but he can’t quite manage to hold onto the emotion. There’s so many swirling around inside of him that he doesn’t even know what he feels, just that he’s feeling a lot of it all at once.

“What the hell have you been doing all this time?” 

Ford sighs deeply, and it’s some comfort that he sounds as worn out and overwhelmed as Stan does, at least. “Trying to find a way to stop him. But it’s useless. I’m realizing now that I know hardly anything about him. He knows everything about me, and I know nothing.” He tugs at a knot hard enough that the string snaps again. “Mostly I’ve been studying the portal, trying to find the safest way to destroy it. There’s no point trying now when the loop will just reset it, but in the case that it ended I wanted to be ready. It has to be done carefully, because even destroying it could create a rift and give him exactly what he wants.”

It can’t be that hopeless.

“You wanted me to take the journal,” Stan says, scrambling for a bit of hope. “Would that stop him?”

Ford shakes his head. “No, hiding the blueprints won’t stop him. He’s the one who told me how to build it in the first place. The portal is decades beyond our dimension’s scientific understanding. The truth is that I could never have built it without him.” He scrubs a hand over his face. “I’m a fraud.” He lets out a weak laugh. It teeters on the edge of becoming a sob. “Hiding the blueprints was to keep anyone else from being foolish enough to try what I did.”

“So—so what was your plan?” Surely Ford had had one. Surely with that great big brain of his he’d come up with _something._

“I was going to destroy the portal,” Ford says, then hesitates. His eyebrows furrow, pinching the skin between his eyes into deep wrinkles. “And then I was going to remove his last physical hold on this dimension.”

It takes Stan a moment to understand what that means, but when it dawns on him, it feels like someone’s just broken another rib, the pain immediate and paralyzing. The churning seas inside of him clear, until only one emotion is left: a fierce and scalding anger. 

“You were going to kill yourself?” he shouts, ignoring the pain. He tries to push himself up so he doesn’t have to stare up at his brother from the floor while he yells at him, but he can’t quite manage it. “Are you serious, Stanford?!” 

Ford flinches. He hunches in on himself further, curling so far over his lap that Stan would sympathize with his back if he wasn’t so angry with him. 

“And what, were you not going to tell me at all?! Just ask me to run a stupid errand while you offed yourself _without even telling me_?!” His lungs give out, too battered to handle the yelling, and Stan gasps in great mouthfuls of air. “Was I just supposed to never know?” he wheezes out in between deep breaths.

Ford straightens up. “You weren’t supposed to care!” he shouts back. “I didn’t think you would.”

Stan levels Ford with the coldest glare he can manage. “How dare you."

Ford glares back at him, meeting him in the eye for the first time since the conversation began. Stan sees the anger he feels reflected back at him.

“It wasn’t your problem!” Ford snarls. “It was _mine_ , and I had to deal with it. I was going to fix what I screwed up, no matter what it cost. And if I was the only one who had to die then it was worth it. One life for billions. It’s a good trade.”

If Stan could move, he’d grab Ford by his coat collar and shake the stupid out of him.

“Like hell it is!” he snarls back. “I can’t believe you! And you wanted me to help you with this! To be an accessory to—to your _murder_!”

“I can’t take this anymore, Stanley!” Ford screams, and everything in him seems to shatter with it. The anger drains away. When he continues, it’s with great effort, every word a struggle to speak. 

“As soon as I fall asleep, he can do whatever he wants to me. With me! I can't take anymore waking up in the morning with blood on my hands, not knowing if it’s mine or someone else’s! I can’t take living in fear of falling asleep, even just for a moment! Even if the portal is destroyed, he can use me until the end of time. _That_ was the deal I made, Stanley,” he says fiercely. “The end of time.”

He drags his knees up to his chest and locks his arms tight around them, burying his face in the fabric of his pants. “I can’t—I can’t take it anymore. I’m _tired_.”

And he looks it, worn down and whittled away from the inside out, far too thin and far too fatigued. He looks weak, his body struggling to keep moving with little sleep and barely any food, and as soon as that thought enters Stan’s mind, another follows quickly on its heels. Ford _had_ been starving himself. 

That had been his plan.

It hurts. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts, an unbearable ache somewhere deep inside of him where he can’t reach, where he has no hope of soothing away. In the very core of him, everything that makes him who he is, his brother and his family and Glass Shard Beach and his longing and heartbreak, something cracks clean through and crumbles into dust.

He wants to hit his brother for being so stupid, for getting himself into a mess that Stan has no hope of fixing. He wants to hug him and brush away every burden. His broken ribs keep him from doing either.

“You can’t,” he whispers instead. _I just got you back_ , he wants to say. _I can’t lose you again._

The adventure they’d shared, their one good day, feels centuries away, distant and out of reach. 

“I have to,” Ford says resolutely. 

There’s no solving this, Stan realizes. He was never going to get his brother back after all. 

He wishes he had never come to this house in the first place.

He stares up at the ceiling, watching the dust drift through the light let in from the open door.

“What do we do now?” he asks helplessly. 

“We stop him from starting the portal.”

It seems like an impossible feat. 

“For how long, Ford? The loop means he can keep coming back.”

“Forever,” Ford says stubbornly. “If he starts it, he destroys the world.”

Stan never signed up for this. He doesn’t think he’s prepared to handle it. But he can’t leave his brother to deal with it alone, so he must. He closes his eyes and lets the decision he’s made settle over him. It feels too heavy to manage. 

“Okay,” he says weakly.

Ford pushes himself to his feet. His eye is completely swollen now. It looks painful, but he doesn’t seem to register it. “We should close this loop,” he says. “Before he has a chance to find another host.”

Stan agrees. He also wouldn’t mind resetting his ribs sooner rather than later. He fumbles a hand out and finds the driver, then drags it towards Ford.

“Do me a favor, would ya?”

Ford looks down at him, eyes moving from Stan’s face to the driver in his hands, squinting in an attempt to see clearly. 

“Knock me out.”

Stan doesn’t think Ford has any right to look as upset with that request as he does, not after what he's been planning.

“It’s the fastest way,” Stan argues. “And I’m in a fuck ton of pain right now.”

Ford’s face softens. He grabs the driver. “I suppose you’re right,” he admits, though he can’t quite push the unease from his face.

Before he can move, Stan holds up a hand. “Wait.”

Ford waits.

“Don’t fuck it up. Knock me out in one hit, okay.”

Ford huffs. “I think I can manage it, Stanley.”

“I’m just saying. I don’t need another injury right now.”

Ford’s hands tighten around the driver. He lifts it up. “It will be fine,” he tells him, which is so far from the truth Stan wants to laugh, but he can’t quite manage it.

“Wait,” he says again, another thought coming to mind, and Ford dutifully halts. “It takes me like two hours to get here every morning. You’re gonna have to hold him off by yourself for a while.”

Ford’s face hardens with determination. He nods.

And then he brings the driver down, and the next thing Stan is aware of is the back seat of his car.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realized I might have possibly contradicted myself in this chapter with Ford knowing the loop kept Bill from possessing him from the get-go, but I rationalized it like this: Ford always realized the loop kept Bill from using their deal, he just hadn't realized that that meant he was safe to actually leave his house and go outside until Stan brought it up.
> 
> I gave y’all one happy, fluffy chapter before going straight to Extreme Angst lmao I’m so sorry I can’t help it.
> 
> Also, check me out on [Tumblr](https://bombshellsandbluebells.tumblr.com/) to come chat about Gravity Falls or anything else! :)


	11. Die, Rinse, Repeat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Titling this chapter felt like that time in TAZ: Balance when Clint was like, "I'm worried that you named this arc The Suffering Game," and Griffin was like, "Don't worry about it."
> 
> As always, thank you for your wonderful comments. I treasure them all so much. They really do give me the motivation and encouragement I need to finish this fic. We're really close to the end now, and I'm so excited to share the finale of this story with all of you.

The truth leaves a pungent aftertaste in Stan’s mouth. He pushes the Stanleymobile to her limits, barely giving himself or his car time to breathe, but Ford’s house is still two hours away, and that’s two whole hours for the revelations his brother spilled to tumble and turn in Stan’s mind. He wants to throw up, but doing so would waste time he doesn’t have, so he swallows the bile back down. It’s hard to know which is worse: the idea that Ford nearly ended the world or that he nearly ended himself, and that this ridiculous time loop Stan accidentally trapped them both in is the only thing standing in the way of either becoming a reality. 

Once upon a time, Stan built his entire identity on the role of protecting Ford; it had been the only thing he’d ever really been good at. But now, with so many years removed and against a threat he still can’t quite believe is even real, he feels woefully inadequate to do the job. How can he possibly fight against a demon? Against the end of the world?

He’s just a high school dropout with less than two dollars to his name. The only reason he’s survived this long is sheer dumb luck.

He can’t even be there for his brother right now when he really needs it.

“Fuck!” he yells and urges the car to go faster.

Bill’s body is lying face down in the snow outside Ford’s house when Stan finally arrives. 

Or the body of his current host, he supposes—that Northwest fellow, poor sucker that he is. Stan skirts around him, eyes looking anywhere but at the red-stained snow, and hurries to knock on the front door.

The crossbow is the first thing to greet him. Stan can’t disguise his flinch. He scrambles away from Ford and throws his hands up in a sign of surrender, trying to swallow the heart that’s leapt up into his windpipe at the familiar image. 

“Fucking—shit—Ford, it’s me!”

Ford looks as wild as he had the day Stan first arrived. Any peace he’d managed to find in the loop has been stripped away from him with Bill’s reappearance, leaving the terrified, unstable man that had haunted some of Stan’s worst memories. For a brief, unsteady moment, Stan almost worries he might get shot again.

And then Ford comes back to himself. His eyes clear. With a look of absolute horror, he throws the crossbow away from him. 

“Sorry,” he gasps. “Sorry, I just—” He eyes Stan warily, glancing between him and the body several yards behind him.

“It’s me,” Stan promises. He inches closer, his hands still raised for Ford to see. “Ford, I didn’t give him permission, I swear.” He realizes something. “Check my eyes! You can tell it’s him from the eyes, right?”

Ford only relaxes once he does so. 

“I’m sorry,” he says again as he lets Stan into the house. “I didn’t mean to scare you, I just”—he pulls the blinds away from his window to survey the yard—”don’t know how soon he’ll come back.”

Stan places a reassuring hand on Ford’s shoulder and rides out the expected flinch.

“It’s okay,” he tells him sincerely. 

The crossbow had nearly given him a heart attack, sure, but he’s seen what Bill's capable of and it makes his brother so much easier to understand in retrospect. Maybe if Stan had been plagued by a demon who could hide himself in the bodies of seemingly normal human beings, he’d start shooting people too. 

Oh.

 _Oh_.

Ford really hadn’t known it was Stan, had he? 

The last little bit of resentment Stan hadn’t even known he’d been holding onto slips away. He studies Ford as he paces the rooms of his house, methodically checking the windows, and his heart aches for him the way it had ached the day before, made all the worse for the hopelessness. He thinks back to that first disorienting loop and sees it again in a new light, no longer the proof of his brother’s hatred, but the result of such intense, paralyzing fear it almost hurts to look at.

Stan closes his eyes to hold the tears back. He breathes out roughly through his teeth. 

“I’m sorry.”

The words are getting easier to say. They slip out without force or fanfare. 

Ford pauses. He turns away from the window to level Stan with a look of confusion. “For what?”

All of it, Stan wants to say. Everything you’ve been through that I wasn’t here for.

He gestures vaguely towards the yard where the body lays, as if it can encompass everything. “I’m sorry you had to deal with him alone. Sorry I can’t get here sooner.”

Ford’s face softens. “Stanley,” he says, voice thick with an emotion Stan can’t quite name. “You completely underestimate how reassuring it is just to know that you’re coming.” 

There’s nothing but sincerity in Ford’s face—not an ounce of resentment or bitterness—but it does nothing to assuage the guilt Stan feels. If only he’d driven further the day before the loop. If only he hadn’t pushed Ford into the portal to begin with. If only he had made it more clear all those years ago just how much he cared.

“Stop it.”

The command cuts through Stan’s spiraling thoughts. He looks up at Ford in surprise to see that he’s frowning at him, face drawn with a stubbornness Stan’s well familiar with.

“Whatever you’re thinking, stop it,” Ford says again. “You can’t blame yourself for something outside of your control. Besides, the fault is clearly all mine. I started all of this.”

“He tricked you,” Stan argues, the familiar anger at this thing that had tormented his brother surging through him. He remembers the way Ford had looked that night in the bar when he’d argued Stan wasn’t to blame for trusting Jimmy all the way to prison. At the time he’d thought that Ford looked sad for him; now he wonders if Ford hadn’t looked desperate to believe his own words. 

Stan certainly hadn’t believed them when they’d been turned his way, but now that they’re flipped around he can see the truth in them so clearly. Whatever mistakes Ford had made—whatever mistakes Stan had made—neither of them could be blamed for seeking out affection and belonging. Who could ever be blamed for that?

“He lied to you. You didn’t know what you were doing, Ford.”

Ford doesn’t look convinced. 

“No, look,” Stan argues, “You’re a stubborn pain in the ass, alright? But you wouldn’t have tried to end the world. Not on purpose. That’s not on you.”

Ford frowns at him. “I’m unclear if that was meant to be reassuring or not.”

“It—” Stan falters. The next words burst out before he even has time to think them through. “I’m still kind of pissed at you." Ford stiffens. “You say you don’t know how to trust me, but—but you _lied_ to me. And you hid things from me. Big”—he gestures again towards the body outside—”fucking things, Ford.” He hadn’t realized the anger was still there beneath the fear and guilt until he’d started speaking. He takes a deep breath and tries not to let it overwhelm him.

“And maybe I haven’t been completely honest with you either,” he admits. “There’s things I don’t want to tell you about the last ten years. _Ever_. But—but, _fuck_ , Ford. My secrets weren’t planning to end the fucking world.”

Ford twists his hands behind his back. He keeps staring out the window, but Stan wonders if it has less to do with checking for Bill and more to do with avoiding Stan’s eyes.

“I never meant for anyone else to get involved in this,” he says softly. “When I asked you to take the journal, I thought that would be the end of it for you. I never intended for you to ever have to deal with Bill. He was _my_ problem. You can go. I don’t expect you to spend eternity fighting my battles.” 

“Well too fucking bad.”

Ford whips around to look at him in surprise.

“I mean, yeah, everything's fercockt, but I’m not going anywhere,” Stan says stubbornly. “I’m not leaving you to deal with him alone.”

Ford stares at him. A smile tugs at the corners of his mouth. He lets out a scoff. “All these years, and you’re still trying to protect me,” he says quietly.

Stan shrugs. “You’re my brother.” And in the end, bitterness and misunderstandings aside, that’s all it comes down to. Ford is a stubborn pain in the ass who might break Stan’s heart on multiple occasions, but he’ll never stop loving him. And he’s starting to think that despite the anger, Ford is never going to stop loving him back. “If you have to fight a demon for eternity, I’m going to fight him with you.”

Ford shakes his head weakly. “I don’t deserve it.”

“So what?” Stan scoffs. “You’re getting it.”

They can sit here passing the blame back and forth forever, but what's the point? It doesn’t change anything. 

He raises a hand into the air and watches Ford’s smile break free before he even speaks the words. “High six?”

Ford raises his own hand. “High six,” he echoes.

* * *

No body mars Ford’s front yard the next time Stan arrives. 

In fact, not one single thing about the property looks disturbed until the Stanleymobile’s tires drag wide tracks through the fresh snow. There are no footprints in the yard or signs of forced entry. When Stan checks the front door, he finds all locks and deadbolts still completely secure. From looks alone, one might think that Bill hasn’t arrived at all this cycle, but Stan knows, deep in the pit of his gut where instinct reigns, that that isn’t true.

When he knocks on the door and calls his brother’s name, there’s no answer. He tries the doorknob again, but it refuses to budge.

“Ford! Come on! Open up!” He bangs a hand against the door, but the only response is the sound echoing through the house and back at him.

The hair on the back of his neck raises. He eyes the windows. They look untouched, but there are other windows lining the house and another door around back. Bill wouldn’t have to use the front door to get inside.

Stan stumbles down to the steps to the yard and digs his bare hands into the snow without stopping to consider the cold, searching the frozen grass frantically for a rock or something equally heavy. His hands close around something large and cold, and he doesn’t even waste the time to check what it is, just grabs it and hurls it straight through Ford’s window. 

It shatters with a loud crash. Stan pushes in the pieces still stubbornly clinging to the window pane, ignoring the cuts he gets for it. As soon as there’s a wide enough gap to squeeze through, he forces his way into the house. 

The sight of the backdoor down the hallways confirms his suspicions. It’s hanging wide open, the glass window above the doorknob shattered and lined with blood. The door frame and floor below are littered with bolts that have missed their target. Heart in his throat, Stan sprints to the room with the hidden basement door, nearly slipping once or twice on forgotten odds and ends and just barely managing to right himself and keep going.

When he enters the room, he finds Bill.

Northwest’s body is laid out on his back over a sea of fallen books. There’s a crossbow bolt buried in one blood-drenched shoulder and another through his eye. The bookshelf is hanging wide open in front of him, the entrance to the stairs completely exposed. Bill might be laid out dead at Stan’s feet now, but he’d gotten far too close for comfort.

Ford is nowhere in sight. He still doesn’t answer when Stan calls his name. 

He eyes the open doorway and steps forward, but he doesn’t even need to make it to the basement to find Ford. His brother’s body is crumpled at the foot of the stairs, limbs twisted in nauseatingly irregular positions.

Stan hurries down the stairs to reach him. Up close, he can see the odd angle Ford’s neck is twisted at and hopes, at the very least, that Ford had gone quickly enough not to feel anything. His eyes stare blankly out into space. Stan reaches out a hand and gently closes them, feeling the sharp claws of grief digging into his chest despite knowing that Ford is fine.

“You did good,” he tells the body gently, wishing that reassurance could follow his brother into the next loop. 

With a sigh, he walks back upstairs to find the sleeping pills Ford had revealed last cycle, preparing himself to do everything—the drive, the fear, stumbling upon whatever horrors await him at Ford’s house—all over again.

* * *

That’s how it goes for longer than Stan can keep track of.

He wakes up, and he drives, always making it to Ford’s just a little too late. He finds either one body or two in the aftermath of a disaster he wasn’t there for. He ends the loop, sometimes with Ford and sometimes without, and then he wakes up and does it all over again.

Stan has never quite understood the term soul-crushing so intimately until now. 

Weariness devours him from the inside out. Every part of him feels worn-down and kaput, running on fumes. Time loses all meaning, and his mind spirals untethered and imbalanced in the wake of it, unable to grasp how long he’s lived like this and unable to fathom the idea of continuing on into eternity. 

They don’t live full days anymore. Half of the time, Ford doesn’t even make it the two hours it takes Stan to get there, and even when he does, there’s no time to sit and talk or enjoy each other’s company. The need to end the loop before Bill can gain a foothold is more important than taking the time to rest or to live. Existence becomes a repetitive, joyless slog of terror and exhaustion, and Stan can’t see any end in sight.

If they stop fighting, Bill wins. If they slip up, Bill wins.

The fate of the world is too heavy to shoulder. Slowly and steadily, it crushes Stan underneath.

But Ford’s words spur him on. It’s enough just for Ford to know he’s coming, and so he comes, every time, to witness the aftermath.

One cycle, Stan breaks into the house to find Ford dead in the living room. No matter how many times he sees his brother’s lifeless body, and no matter how well he knows that it isn’t permanent, it never gets easier to handle. This time is one of the worst: an ocean of blood seeping into the floorboards beneath Ford’s body and splattered as far as the walls. Stan clenches his teeth tightly together to fight back the nausea and heaves in a deep breath, searching the room for any sign of Bill.

His heart plummets when he can’t find any.

In the study, the bookshelf has been pulled open to reveal the basement entrance, and Stan’s heart falls even further at the sight. He hurries downstairs as quickly as he can, unable to shake the feeling that he’s walking steadily towards his own doom.

Bill is at the control panel by the time he makes it downstairs, lights blinking on around him as he punches buttons and turns knobs with obvious expertise. He must hear Stan enter, because he pauses in his actions to turn his awful grin on him. The darkness of the basement casts most of his face in shadow, making him look even more drawn and skeleton than before. A blinking light below him coats his face and shining, exposed teeth in vivid red.

The red splashed across Northwest’s expensive suit, however, has nothing to do with the light. Stan can’t drag his eyes away from it.

“Ah, Stanley!” Bill crows. “You’re just in time to join the party! Too bad your brother couldn’t make it.”

Anger sparks in Stan’s chest. It catches. He feels himself go up in flames.

In all his years on the road, in all the odd and illegal jobs he’s picked up just to make enough to eat, he’s never killed anyone, and he’s been more thankful for it than he can even put into words. Staring at Bill’s demonic grin and his brother’s blood splashed across his clothes, he feels the desire for the first time in his life. He wants to reach inside that puppet Bill’s wearing and tear him limb from limb, make him feel the hurt and fear he’s forced on Ford and on Stan, and turn his own awful grin back at him while he does it.

He wants to destroy him, grind him down to dust until there’s nothing left.

Bill hits one final button on the control panel before him, and the lights around the portal flicker on. They coat the dark basement in bright blue. A steady, mechanical keening fills the air; it hums through the cement floor at Stan’s feet, up through his legs, and into his bones, until he can feel it vibrating even in his teeth.

Horror doses the anger as quickly as a tidal wave, and Stan stares, dumbstruck, at the light building in the center of the metal structure.

There’s no time to fight Bill. There’s no time to try to stop what he’s done.

But if the loop restarted before the rift formed, it’d buy them at least another day.

Ford’s already dead upstairs.

Stan’s the only one keeping this loop going.

He’s been knocked unconscious enough times in his life to get a good enough idea of how to do it. Take skull, apply force. It seems easy enough. Without a second thought, Stan grabs hold of one of the control panels and slams his face into the corner of it with as much force as he can manage—it isn’t enough. When he pulls his face away, he’s dizzy with pain, but still conscious.

Bill startles. For the first time, the grin on his face falters. “Wait, what are you doing?”

Stan steadies himself for a second try.

Bill reaches a hand out. He stumbles towards him. Behind him the portal continues to whirl into being. “No, stop!”

He’s too late.

With one quick move, Stan restarts the loop. 

* * *

It’s a dangerously close call, and Stan can’t shake it off. The dread sticks with him through the next loop and the next after that, on and on and on. Bill never makes it that far again, but the fear stays close and intimate all the same, and Stan knows, with certainty, that it's only a matter of time before Bill turns the portal on for good.

“We can’t keep doing this,” he admits softly one loop. He's sitting on the floor across from the bookshelf where his legs had finally given out, too exhausted to stay standing. He stares dully at the motionless body in front of him.

Beside him, Ford heaves out a sigh. Bill had broken his arm during their recent struggle, and he holds the injured limb awkwardly against his body, wincing whenever he jostles it.

“We have to,” he argues, but the determination he’d held onto in previous cycles has all but disappeared. The words sound weak and brittle.

Stan buries his face in his knees. He wishes he could shut out the world for just a few hours—just long enough to sleep and feel rested, to shake the exhaustion from his mind and his bones. For so many years, he’s feared death—to exposure, to starvation, in the trunk of a car dumped in a forgotten river, to the hands of men like Rico. Immortality should feel like a gift, but it doesn’t.

It feels like a curse.

It feels like the worst prison he’s ever known.

What good is eternity—even eternity with his brother—if he can’t even live? 

“Yeah, I know,” he manages to say and braces himself for a new day.

* * *

Bill disappears.

For four days in a row, there’s no sign of him at all. As terrifying as his presence at the house was, his absence is all the more horrifying. It creates too many questions and leaves both Stan and Ford fumbling in the wake of a shattered routine they may not have grown comfortable with, but had at the very least grown accustomed to. The unknowns crowd the house with a dense, impenetrable tension and the excruciating anxiety of waiting for the other shoe to drop, knowing that it will, but uncertain when or how.

“We need to end the time loop,” Stan insists, pacing a circle into the floor of Ford’s study.

Ford glances at him from his perch in front of the bookshelf. He’s taken up the same position every single day since Bill stopped appearing, the crossbow clutched tightly in his hands, latched and loaded. It still gives Stan heart palpitations just looking at the thing, but it’s the best weapon either of them have. The gun sitting in the Stanleymobile’s glove box doesn’t actually have any bullets, and while waving it around with some Academy Award level confidence might scare off anyone trying to rob him, it’s useless against Bill.

“It’s the only way,” Stan continues. “If we can end the loop, then we could tear down the portal and buy us some time and then—” He stops abruptly, his voice hitching. He looks at Ford, who stares back at him with a defeat in his eyes that Stan doesn’t want to see. He points forcefully at him and adds, “And then we’re gonna figure something else out.”

Ford sighs. “If you have an idea for how to break the loop, then by all means, I’d love to hear it, because I’m afraid I don’t know how.”

Stan drags a hand over his face. “Maybe we should just try going through the portal again.”

"I’ve told you why that won’t work. It might—”

“I know, I know,” Stan snaps, cutting him off. “I’m just—” 

Tired, he wants to say, but he doesn’t get the chance. A giant, metal shape comes crashing through the ceiling just feet away from them. Broken wood beams and shingles clatter to the floor below, just barely missing Stan on their way down, and he scrambles away from the chaos, his heart beating a mile a minute. 

He makes sense of the noise before he can make sense of what he sees: it’s the loud, frantic beeping of a car alarm— _his_ car alarm. 

The smoke and dust clears enough to see the red paint job of his pride and joy, now scuffed and scratched, worn away where the roof has torn at it, although the ruined paint job is nothing compared to the shape of the car itself. It’s crumpled in on the sides as if a giant hand has reached around it and crushed it within its grasp, dented and bruised where it had hit first the roof and then the floor of Ford’s study. As Stan watches, a stray beam tumbles from the hole above and lands directly on the windshield, which shatters into pieces with a magnificent crash, covering the seats below in a spray of glass. 

“My car,” he says weakly, taking a hesitant step towards it. 

Behind him, he hears Ford stand and run out of the room, perhaps to check the yard outside, but Stan can barely register anything but the utter destruction of his prized possession—not just his car, not just a belonging, but the only home he’s had for years.

“My _car_ ,” Stan moans again. He runs a hand gingerly across her shattered sides. 

“No!” Ford shouts from the other room. “No, no, no, stop that!” There’s the sound of the front door swinging open and Ford’s hurried footsteps as he runs outside, which is enough to snap Stan out of his mourning and send him running quickly after his brother.

He’s not expecting the sight that greets him when he makes it outside. 

A giant made of bark and tree branches stands at the edge of the forest in front of Ford’s house, towering high above the pines and even higher above the two humans in front of it, and it’s busy trying to rip one of those pines free from the ground. After a bit of tugging, it manages to pull it out, roots and all, and aims it high in the air as if it’s about to throw it directly into Ford’s house.

“No! Steve! Stop it!” Ford yells angrily up at it, completely without fear. He waves his arms high above his head to get the thing’s attention. “Don’t you dare! That’s my house!’

The thing—Steve, which is a wild name for a giant tree monster in Stan’s opinion—pauses and looks down at Ford curiously. It rumbles out a deep reply that shakes the very ground and vibrates through Stan’s feet.

Stan turns to Ford for an explanation. “What’d it say?” 

Ford shrugs. “I’m not sure. I’ve never actually been able to understand him.”

The thing could easily crush Stan with one finger if it wanted to, but he’s been through worse deaths at this point. He storms forward, jabbing a furious finger in the giant’s direction. “What the hell?! That was my car! What do you have against my car, huh?”

Steve rumbles out another nonsensical reply. Slowly, he lowers the pine tree.

“You can’t just destroy a man’s car! And why now, huh?! You’ve never done that before—”

Realization comes quickly and nauseatingly. It stops Stan in his tracks.

He whips his head around to lock eyes with Ford and sees the same horrified understanding reflected back at him.

It’s a distraction.

As one, they sprint back towards the house as quickly as they can. Stan catches sight of the shattered window above the backdoor and feels a ghostly hand crushing his lungs as easily as Steve had crushed his car. He uses the fear to spur himself on faster, following at Ford’s heels to the study where the bookshelf sits open.

And then a curious thing happens. 

Stan’s boots stop making contact with the floor below him. A quick glance down reveals that he’s not imagining it; there’s at least an inch of open air between his feet and the floorboards, and it only grows greater as he watches. The feeling of weightlessness washes through him, that same awful feeling he’d felt as the portal had dragged him up into the air and closer towards it. He kicks his legs, paddling gracelessly through the air, but he can’t move. Ahead of him, Ford is suffering from the same thing, frantically kicking and reaching for the bookshelf as if he could pull himself towards it, his face paling more and more by the second.

And just as suddenly as it had started, it stops. Gravity regains control, and the brothers go crashing to the floor below.

“What the hell was that?” Stan yells, struggling up onto his hands and knees.

“A gravitational anomaly,” Ford gasps, scrambling to his feet. “It was a proposed side effect of the portal.” 

He locks eyes with Stan. The horror twisting his face is great enough that Stan can feel it spilling over him just from sight alone, clogging his lungs and wreaking havoc through his chest, filling him with a level of terror he’s only felt once before in his life, when he’d watched the portal dragging Ford towards it. 

He knows what’s happening before Ford even says it, but he wishes, desperately, that he didn’t, that by not knowing it could somehow make it not true, that he could cling to blissful obliviousness for just a little longer.

“It’s on.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yiddish:
> 
> Kaput - utterly finished, destroyed; unable to function (this one has mostly made it into English so I'm sure it's familiar)  
> Fercockt - all fucked up; FUBAR (to be completely honest, I'm still not quite sure I used this one correctly, but I really wanted Stan to say it)


	12. The Portal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow. The positive reaction and lovely comments that last chapter got was completely overwhelming. I was blown away. Thank you so, so much. I honestly reread all your comments like 5 times. They make me so happy! 
> 
> Suggested soundtrack for this chapter because it's what I've been picturing this scene to for months: "Final Frontier" by Thomas Bergersen. :)

The portal looms large and indomitable. It seems to swallow the very space around it, already devouring their world with it’s greedy, gaping maw. The minute Stan stumbles out of the elevator, the sound of it crashes violently against him—far louder than the last time he’d seen it on, somewhere between the wailing of a cyclone and the screeching of a hundred overworked machines. 

The air is filled with an odd electrical hum. Stan can feel it vibrating through him, prickling against his skin, standing his hair on end. It feels like the portal itself is shuddering through the room—like it wants nothing more than to escape its confines. 

Standing in front of the giant beast, silhouetted by the bright, blue light it gives off, stands Bill. His back is to them, his arms outstretched in delighted victory.

“Just in time!” he yells without turning around. “I can’t wait for you to meet my friends! They’ll be so glad to meet _you_ , Sixer.”

The taunt spurs Ford into action. He sprints to the main control room, sliding to a frenzied stop in front of one of the computers, and begins stabbing furiously at buttons.

Stan watches as Bill turns and catches sight of Ford. He looks ghastly in the harsh light of the portal, pale and sharp, his ever-present grin twisting his host’s features into something monstrous. Hatred flickers in his eyes as he watches Ford, and he starts towards him. Without a second thought, Stan slips on his knuckledusters and intercepts Bill before he can make it to his brother. The punch he throws connects solidly with the demon’s cheek. He feels the bone crack and give way beneath his fist, and he levels Bill with his own savage grin. 

But Bill only shakes his head. “Woo! Pain!” he yells cheerfully. “What a rush!”

He swings a fist back at Stan, but Stan dances out of reach. Years of boxing lessons from gyms and city streets alike echo through his head. He stays light on his feet. He stays moving. He slips to Bill’s side. He pulls his arm back to throw another punch—

And gravity stops working.

Stan’s feet leave the ground. Without it anchoring him, he loses his balance and tips almost completely upside down. His stomach lurches. He flails in the air, trying to right himself, but it’s useless—he’s stuck, completely powerless, at the whim of the portal and her moods. 

And then, as suddenly as it had left, gravity returns. Stan crashes down to the cement floor below. It’s not a far fall, but the landing is rough. He hits shoulders first and then comes down hard on his back. The force of it knocks the air from his lungs. For a brief moment, he can do nothing but lay spreadeagled on the floor, wheezing, trying to clear the stars from his vision.

A weight settles on top of him. His vision clears to reveal Bill’s grinning face above him. The skin around his cheek and jaw is rapidly beginning to swell, but he looks completely unbothered by it. Ice-cold fingers wind their way around Stan’s neck and squeeze, crushing his windpipe between them. 

Stan gasps for air, but no air comes. He tries to buck Bill off. He tries to squirm out from beneath his grasp or shove his knee up into the demon’s gut or wrench his squeezing fingers free or sock him in the jar again, but nothing works. Bill holds his ground, the knee in Stan’s chest pinning him down, his fingers biting deeper into the skin of Stan’s neck. He cackles at Stan’s squirming. 

Stan’s lungs burn. They scream for relief. His head starts spinning. The edges of his vision begin to darken. 

And then the hands are gone.

Stan gasps, choking on the sudden influx of air. Gasping, weak, his limbs trembling and out of focus, he rolls onto his side and struggles up onto his hands and knees. A violent cough forces its way up through his aching throat, rattling through his body. He’s not sure how long it takes to get his wits back, but when he manages to lift his head and realize why Bill left before finishing the job, his heart drops. 

Bill has Ford pinned against the hard metal of the control panel, his hands clawing at his face, aiming for the throat while Ford struggles to hold him off. The body that Bill’s chosen might be smaller, but Ford’s own body is weak, starved, and exhausted, no match for a thing that doesn’t feel pain. He’s just barely managing to fight back Bill’s grasping hands.

Stan gulps in another breath of air and forces his still trembling body to its feet, then into a shaky sprint, and slams full-force into Bill’s side, knocking him away from Ford. He just barely manages to catch his balance before he crashes to the ground, but he can’t dodge the fist that comes flying back at him. Pain explodes through his face. He feels more than hears the crack that signals a broken nose and stumbles backwards.

Bill steps closer.

Shaking off the pain, ignoring the blood dripping across his lips, Stan raises his fists in a fighter’s stance. He doesn’t even have a chance to throw another punch. Ford braces himself against the control panel behind him and shoves the heel of his boot directly into Bill’s chest. Bill, too focused on Stan to brace himself for Ford’s attack, goes stumbling backwards and loses his balance. He hits the ground, and his back slams into the side of the control panel behind him.

The noise he lets out doesn’t sound like a human scream. It sounds like something has reached inside Northwest’s throat and twisted his vocal cords until it wrenched the awful sound free. Bill flails, trying to pull away from the control panel behind him, his body moving in wild, uncoordinated jerks. Smoke curls up from the back of his suit jacket. Behind him, Stan catches a glimpse of the smoldering protection symbol. Bill heaves, eyes blow wide in shock and, for the first time, actual pain. 

The smile has left his face.

When he looks up, his yellow, inhuman eyes boil with fury.

  
  
  
  


“ "̶̥̦̝̪̜͎͂̔̑̎̉͋͗͑͐͛̈́͛̓̎̚͝S̷̢̢̤̫̼̤̣̹̺̭̠̟͇̑̉͝T̵̡̮̟̤͍̭͍̘̺͖̒́̔̽̂͗ͅÄ̸̛̝̫̣̜̝̼̱̖̙͈̘̞̮́̍͆͊̀̒̎͋͘̕͠͠͝N̸̢̨̰̥͚͍̫̩̮͉̣̳͚͒̽̋̏͗̅͗̔̏̿͑͌̉͊̔͝͝ͅF̵̡̧͕̝̯̜̯̱̯̉ͅO̴̖̩̘̟̅̿̃̐̀̋̑͑R̴̡̡̧͖̲̪͕͚̼̻̰̹̱̭̥̣̓̾̈́D̴̢͕͇̞̦̩̹͒̽̉͌͒͛͑̄͐͂ͅ!̸̢̥̲̼͓͚̘͆̇̋͒̎̾͂͐͌̀"̷͕̤̹͎̰̲̼̞̼͚͉̟̫̽̋͌̊̓͋́̄̈́͘̕͜͠͝ͅ “

  
  
  


Stan flinches at the scream. It’s a cacophony of every awful sound he’s ever heard—nails against chalkboard, the screeching of scraping metal, a blaring, ear-splitting fire alarm all wrapped up into one awful wail twisted into his brother’s name. It stops Stan in his tracks. For a moment, the fear that Bill has always filled him with completely overwhelms him.

Luckily for both of them, Ford stays focused. Before Bill can stumble back onto his feet, he grabs Stan’s arm and drags him out of the main control room, past the safety glass, and into the open room where the whirling portal stands. There shouldn’t be any wind in an underground room, but there is, and it’s kicking up into a fury. It whips Stan’s hair into his face and tugs at Ford’s long coat. Loose pieces of cement spin through the air like missiles. One hits Stan in the shoulder hard enough to bruise.

“We’ll have to use the manual override!” Ford shouts above the noise. “It’s even more unstable than it should be! He’s disabled all the safety parameters!” He pulls Stan to another control panel closer to the portal. The words MANUAL OVERRIDE are painted across the side. Three keys sit in slots across the top. Ford grabs hold of two and gestures for Stan to grab the third. “We need to turn them at the same time!”

In unison, they turn the three keys. Stan waits for the portal to stop, but nothing changes; the wind continues to whip around them, the portal continues to whirl and hum.

And then he sees a pole adorned with a single red button rising up from the floor in the middle of the room. 

Ford points at it. “There! We need to hit that!”

Bill slams into his side. 

They hit the ground at a roll. Stan starts towards them, but Ford manages to get a hand free to gesture forcefully at him. 

“The button!” he yells as he attempts to push Bill off of him. “Hit the button!”

Stan runs for it. The closer he gets, the harder it is to fight against the wind, the louder the hum roars against his ears. It shakes violently up through the floor and through his legs. 

He’s almost to the button when the portal swells and billows. A surge of energy ripples through the air, hitting Stan as powerfully as an ocean wave. It throws him backwards, but he never hits the ground. He starts rising.

Gravity has stopped once again, and this time, it doesn’t return. 

The entire room shudders. The portal rips at the floor, at the walls, at the ceilings, pulling huge sheets of metal free. Behind Stan, the control room groans as the portal tries to drag it in. The glass window cracks. Nuts and bolts that were fastened just a little too loosely rip free, spinning through the air. Wires pull free from the floor and the ceilings.

And amidst the chaos, the riptide drags Stan ever closer to the source of it.

And, miraculously, towards the button that will shut it all down.

As soon as he drifts close enough, Stan grabs hold of the pole and hangs on for dear life. Keeping one hand secured around the pole, he raises the other high, ready to slam it down on the button.

Another wave surges through the room. 

It throws all of the loose floating bits of metal and odds and ends hard against the walls. One whistles by Stan at high speeds, too close for comfort. The wave shoves his body away from the portal; the hand holding onto the pole nearly slips free. And then, like the tides, it ebbs back, dragging him closer to the gaping mouth once more. 

With a grunt, his heart pounding loudly and wildly in his chest, Stan manages to get his other hand around the pole and clings. He looks up to search the room for Ford and Bill and finds them locked in another struggle. A metal support beam pulled free by the portal has trapped Bill against the far wall, likely pinning him under it with the last outward surge. His hands are clenched tightly around the ends of Ford’s long coat, keeping him trapped there as well. Ford squirms and kicks, but he can’t dislodge Bill’s hands. 

He looks up at Stan. “HIT THE BUTTON!” he screams.

Bill barks a laugh. “Go ahead, turn it off! I’ll just be back tomorrow!”

Stan's heart drops. Any ounce of victory or relief he'd felt getting to the override button shrivels and dies. If he shuts the portal down, they'll just end up doing this whole song and dance all over again—on and on, into eternity. The very thought fills him with more dread than the thing behind him, but he steels himself. If he doesn't, their world and everyone else will suffer for it, and Ford will never forgive him. Worse still, Ford will never forgive himself.

Stan raises his hand again over the button, struggling to stay tethered one-handed to the pole.

He hears his brother struggling and glances back at him to see Bill tugging him closer. “Don’t forget you’re _mine_ , Stanford Pines," he says gleefully. His awful smile seems to overtake his entire face. "Until the end of time.” 

Stan would never claim to be a smart guy, but there are moments in his life when fate or some higher power decides to bless him with a truly brilliant idea. His best ideas always come when he’s seconds away from disaster, backed into a corner and running on pure adrenaline and an unbending desire to survive. 

The idea that comes to him then is one of those ideas. 

He turns to look at the behemoth behind him. It utterly dwarves Stan. He feels powerless and small within its sights, close enough to feel the energy crackling off of it. This close, he can almost make out shapes beyond the light, twisting and turning, seemingly alive—an entirely new world beyond the glowing light. An entirely new timeline, perhaps.

 _Until the end of time?_ he thinks. 

That can probably be arranged.

He stares into the face of his worst nightmare. For the first time in a long time, he doesn't feel fear or dread. He feels hope.

Stan looks back at Ford. There’s no time for words or explanations. Miraculously, he doesn’t need them. Ford stares into the portal behind Stan and then locks eyes with him, and Stan sees his own idea reflected back at him in Ford’s face and knows without asking that they’re on the exact same page.

If this timeline unravels, it might just unravel Bill with it. 

Ford’s grin is vicious. It’s victorious.

“Do it!” he shouts. “Stanley, do it!”

The hope trembles. It wanes. He shakes his head frantically. Tears slip from his eyes and float up into the air around him and hang like crystals. “What about you?”

Stan's fine risking his own life, but what will happen to Ford?

Ford shakes his head. “I don’t care!”

Even from this far across the room, Stan can see the same steely determination on his face that had been there when he'd first told Stan his plan to end his life, and he knows that Ford means it, that he's completely prepared to follow through. He'd choose suicide without a second thought if it meant stopping Bill. He'd let Stan go through the portal and destroy him completely, and he wouldn't raise a hand to stop it. One life for millions. Ford had said it was a good trade.

Maybe Stan should do what he hadn't done when he first arrived here and listen to Ford. He knows the stakes now. He understands what they're up against. The fate of their world hangs in the balance and every moment he hesitates, he risks letting Bill win. It's one life for millions, after all. 

But it's his brother's life for millions.

It's not a good trade at all.

How can Ford not understand that?

Stan shakes his head wildly, and screams, “I DO!”

It bursts out of him as powerfully as the portal’s swells and ripples through the room to Ford, crashing over him, leaving him for a brief second gaping and shocked, before his face hardens into a new kind of determination. He slips his arms free of his coat and kicks hard against Bill behind him, using him as a means to push himself forward. The momentum carries him quickly across the room towards Stan and the portal behind him. Stan stares at him, completely frozen, too shocked to even feel the relief.

“Let go!” Ford shouts as he nears.

Stan does so without thinking. Ford reaches out and laces Stan’s five fingers through his six. United, they start to drift backwards towards the portal behind them.

Stan can do nothing but stare at Ford in shock. His brother smiles at him. A million emotions race behind his eyes, so many that Stan can’t hope to categorize them all, but he catches a glimpse of triumph, acceptance, and a steady fear buried beneath.

“We’ll go together,” Ford says.

A sob bubbles up in Stan. He swallows it down. “What’s going to happen?” he asks, trying not to let his terror show.

“I don’t know,” Ford says honestly. His face is bathed completely in blue light now as they creep ever closer. “But I know that the only person I want to get stuck in a time paradox—or, or complete nonexistence with—is _you._ ”

The sob breaks free. Something deep inside of Stan shatters, but in a way that feels good, like a wall that wasn’t meant to be there is tumbling down, like something is breaking free to make way for new growth, like his heart is bursting out of his ribcage, too full to fit.

He lets out a watery laugh. “Geez,” he says through the lump in his throat. “You’re so shmaltzy.”

The portal roars behind him. Stan can feel it prickling against his back, straining towards them, ready to eat them whole. He squeezes Ford’s hands and tries not to be afraid. Whatever’s on the other side of that portal—another loop, total destruction—he’s not facing it alone, and he's not leaving his brother behind. They're facing it together.

“What are you doing?” Bill screams.

Stan looks past Ford to see the demon fighting against the support beam holding him in place. For the first time, something familiar and shockingly human flickers in Bill’s yellow eyes. 

It looks like fear.

“You fools!” he screams. “You—you idiots! Don’t you know what that’s going to do to you?! It’s going to destroy you completely! You—you can’t do this! What are you doing?!”

Bill claws his nails across the beam. He kicks and squirms, but it refuses to budge, lodged securely into the wall behind him. He lets out a scream of rage. “STOP IT! YOU CAN’T DO THIS!”

He reaches a hand up to his back and claws desperately at the sigil burned into his skin, as if he can scrape it away. It’s too far for him to reach.

“WHAT IS THIS?!” he wails. “WHY CAN’T I LEAVE?! WHAT DID YOU DO?!”

Bill stares past Stan. His eyes widen at something that Stan can’t see. He reaches a desperate hand out towards them, his face drenched with absolute horror as Stan’s feet disappear into the portal behind him.

The world unravels. 

Like a sweater unraveling from a loose thread, pulled and pulled until the entire thing loses its shape. Some invisible force in the center of the room seems to devour it, sucking it in like quicksand.

Bill Cipher unravels thread by thread with the space around him. Within one blink and the next, he transforms completely, the man with yellow eyes replaced by a great big _something_ that defies all comprehension. It defies human language entirely. Stan wouldn't be able to put words to it if he tried. 

At the heart of it is a massive yellow eye. It stares straight at him, filled with a fury so tangible he swears he feels it blistering his skin. Surrounding it is a mass of writhing shapes that can’t seem to hold their shape for very long, becoming something different from every new angle, sometimes squirming tentacles, sometimes grasping hands, sometimes sharp teeth, rows and rows unbound by any jaw or mouth, hanging suspended in the air and reaching like fingers.

The _thing_ that is Bill Cipher struggles, straining towards them. It finally claws its way free of the support beam, but it can’t escape the undertow it’s caught in, drawn ever closer to the source of the unraveling, the blackhole that is the dying timeline.

The thing screams, perhaps Ford’s name, perhaps Stan’s, whatever it is swallowed by the timeline’s own deafening swan song—which isn’t composed of any noise at all, but the utter absence of it.

Stan watches in awe and terror as the blackhole inhales every last fragment of the world around it, dragging Bill Cipher in with it thread by thread, until absolutely nothing remains. 

What feels like eons passes in mere seconds. Stan sinks fully into the portal with Ford in his grasp, and then he’s no longer aware of anything at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been excited to write and share this scene since I first came up with it way back around Chapter 3. I just hope I ended up doing the idea justice. Turns out a full chapter of action is very easy to visualize and very hard to actually write.


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